


Once Upon a December

by Phantomwriter05



Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: F/M, Hetero life Parnters Stormpilot, Lightsaber Duels, Post Sequel Trilogy, Princesses, Reylo - Freeform, Saturday Serials Action and Adventure, Separated at Birth, Tragic Love Stories, Two Dads, trash babies
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-01-23
Updated: 2016-03-09
Packaged: 2018-05-15 20:01:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 25,591
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5797882
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Phantomwriter05/pseuds/Phantomwriter05
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Decades after the defeat of the First Order, Ben Solo escapes Exile to seek the help of the daring young captain of the Millennium Falcon to enter occupied space to save a Princess whose powers are promised to a Dark Lord. All in a gambit to save his lost love.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

_A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away …_

 

**STAR WARS**

 

**_ Episode X _ **

 

 

**_Draconian Wars have ended!_ **

**_The Galactic Republic allied with the New Jedi Order_ **

**_have successfully defeated the conquering royal dynasty._ **

**_In the aftermath the armies of the Republic have occupied their systems_ **

**_But hopes of integration are slim as the INSURGENCY has begun._ **

 

**_The royalist have turned to the feared Darth Plagueis._ **

**_Risen from the ashes of the FIRST ORDER,_ **

**_the DARK MISTRESS has vowed to destroyed the Republic_ **

**_and the Jedi Knights that defend it._ **

 

**_Meanwhile, the infamous Ben Solo has returned from EXILE._ **

**_Hoping to recruit a daring young war hero,_ **

**_he races to save a Princess in occupied space._ **

**_Her powerful abilities, sought by Plagueis,_ **

**_could spell doom for Peace and Justice in the Galaxy._ **


	2. Prologue

**Prologue**

There was a soft glow in the night sky, strange colors of green and red shown in the atmosphere overhead. The chill of the night rustled through the trees that shimmied and shook in what seemed like a vain attempt to warm themselves. The dirt and gravel path through the golden and orange leaved forest of autumn crushed and rattled with every step, while strange alien sounds echoed through the shaded canopies of night. Quick and accustomed sight could see small, dwarfish, figures scurrying from trunk to trunk peeking out with red eyes. But at the first flash of speeder lights their figures vanished with nasally cherub giggles.

It's a hundred miles or more from the nearest space port, a twenty minute speeder ride. In the colorful foliage of this seemingly enchanted forest, beings of all shapes and sizes, legs and eyes walked and rode on the gravel road amongst the wild life to reach a wooden cottage in the rural beauty of nowhere. Smoke stacks escaped from a stone chimney spicing the frigid air. Inside shadowed silhouettes in candle light moved about the reflection of frosted windows. The wild and rhythmic string music vibrated from the large wooden timbers and fanned out pasted the collection of junky and sleek parked speeders and into the woods where obscured figures danced drunkenly in their own little inebriated universes.

To say that such a place was dangerous was understatement. Through the door into that shadowed trap was the dwelling some of the most dangerous smugglers, pirates, and adventures the galaxy has spat out. It was a lawless den in the most conspicuous place in the universe. In this enchanted setting, the beauty and grandeur of such memorizing country, it was hard to fathom that you could find a slime hole like this one. Like a rose with poisonous thorns, the allure was spoiled only when it was too late.

But maybe that was the point all along.

A tall, imposing, hooded figure made his way down the path. A single, brown, weather worn, shoulder cloak protected him from the autumn chill. He seemed as inconspicuous as any other patron of the Fall Harvest atmosphere that went on in the farmer's cottage. His steps were purposeful and focused. His shaded eyes did not leave the front of the establishment on approach. All around him he could feel the pulse of the forest, of the barroom, and the intentions of the night before they've even happened. He was surrounded by the chaos of a hundred lives, and the thousands more they've touched and will touch in the future. He could get lost in each one and yet he did not linger on those that did not mean a thing. He was only after one person tonight, and he was in there, amongst them in the dangerous crowd.

All his life he has watched this one from afar. He had seen and felt the smiles and tears of childhood, the glory and suffering of heroism in war as a teenager, and now the loss and emptiness of purpose as a man in the consequence of war and destiny. He wasn't like the other one he had watched. The girl lived a pampered life of sheltered royalty, her dreams involved in the stars, toward adventure, and a galaxy of wonder beyond her sight from palace walls. The man he was looking for got his adventure early and often and saw too much too soon. Driven by idealistic dreams and stories he rushed out to the call and paid for it. There was a strong part of the hooded man that died with that boy. He knew that somehow it was his fault, the man suffered, as much as it was his fault that the princess looking toward her stars and holocharts was now in danger.

The hooded man always knew that it was always his fault.

And caught up in the sorrow of a life of regret, in the sense of a painfully familiar signature in the energy field around him, he lost himself in a moment of revelry. The cabin fell away, the other beings disappeared, and in the combined presence of a directionless hero and trapped princess in his mind, they both replicated a moment in time that he could not let go.

* * *

_In the last explosions of light, the orange sun of the dying day set the clouds a flame in colors of red and violet as the glowing orb fell into the long stretch of blue ocean. A chaotic saber clattered to the rocky ground of the island, its fiery blade burning a clump of green grass. In the last light of the afternoon a figure in black robes fell to his knees, gravel crunching under the dead weight that fell. His dark eyes were dazed and confused. The figure looked as if he had awoken from a long slumber and did not know where he was. Emotion of a deep conflict and defeat were in motion all through the bending energy field that bound the universe together. A narrow chest breathed heavy and his eyes were cast down. He was filled with hatred and anger that bled out of him like rising smoke, blazing away in a burn out. That last fit before surrender. He was untouched and sweating in the crisp evening. He fell forward on his hands and knees._

_It was foolish to try and reason with the idea, the inkling, of the power that overwhelmed him. But it was worth a try … no, not a try, never a try. There was no such thing as try. And maybe that was what made it so simple, the idea, the freedom of the two choices before him and committing to it fully. For so much of his life it was always a world, a system, a galaxy of possibilities. He could go anywhere and do anything. And that was what drove him to all the dark places, the dark thoughts, and in the infinity it was when the darkness blotted out all other things that moved there was peace, there was order in the galaxy. All the chaos fell away and he was one with himself and the dark legacy at his feet. And he was content to live his life in this darkness, in the quiet solitude of the systematic conformity that eliminated the chaos of the world … of his life. When everyone was told what to do, what to think, and where to go, there was no need for conflict. For father's disappearing to race starships in the far reaches of the Outer Rim. There were not more problems than a single woman could handle, and neglect her child to be taken care of by a fussy golden plated butler. And there was no uncle that lived a façade of control over a gaggle of insignificant hangers on and force sensitive potentials. Frustratingly holding him back with the rest of the novice rabble, rather than exploring the power he knew he had running through his veins, through their veins. He saw the chaos of the light, the bogged down, fatness of sentimentality, and the dogma of sensitivity to the weak. All he wished was to eradicate it into something strong and powerful, a universe of diversity and hangers on, condensed into an all-powerful, all solitary, iron fist. He wanted to be the deterrent from an all-encompassing evil._

_Snoke wanted all of this for power, for wisdom, for vengeance against a galaxy that was promised to him and taken away by a power hungry apprentice. Kylo Ren was willing to give it to him for a chance to end all the inconsistencies and false hoods of a life of disorder. Under the new rule of the First Order, he would be the protector, the champion that his uncle and mother would never be. He would use his iron fist to protect the galaxy from all the things that tormented him and never again to torment another. He had been so close. He felt that all he needed to do was find him, find his old master. Prove to him that his failures, his lectures, and warnings were an old thinking of a dusty religion. That his reformation had won in the end and in Luke Skywalker's failures, Kylo Ren had risen to prove the Jedi way wrong, to prove the dead men he talked to false, and to bring order and peace to the galaxy in the great dream of his grandfather. Then in his final step from the precipice of the heaven he reached for …_

_He found an angel._

_He knew her, he had always known her, and she had always been an angel. He had hated the entire rabble in robes, laughing, playing, not knowing of the seriousness of their training. But she knew it was serious, the youngest out of all of them and she was the stand out. And most importantly, she liked him._

_She was a beautiful little bundle, found on some distant moon by his mother, father, and uncle on some adventure far away. They brought her to the temple and left her with his uncle. Years later she met him when he landed on Yavin, and from that day followed everywhere he went, even when he didn't want her too. At all times during the day and night he felt her presence, looking up to find her watching him. When she got hurt, when she was sad, she came to him, not to his uncle, the only father she had ever known. She only came to him. A fight with other students, a saber spar gone too far, and she was the first one there to hold his hand._

_She frustrated him at first, and then she became his only comfort. The little girl became his only ear when no one else would listen to an angry young man filled with a madness of ideas, and the burden of an entire galaxy on his shoulders, placed there by youth. She didn't have an opinion then, she didn't have sagely advice that every man sought from a beautiful angel. She only listened and nodded when he needed a nod, and hugged him when she knew he needed a hug. In his time in that god forsaken academy, she was his only friend, his only_ _**Rey** _ _of light._

_When he saw her again, she was not the little girl he remembered. She was not the presence he had stowed away in his mind and heart, kept out of sight from the senses of the darker beings in the universe. He had buried her in his mind and heart, buried her so deep, like a murderer would the corpse of a beloved he so madly killed in passion. He'd sooner forget her, than to allow her to torment him, allow her fresh young face to cast the shadow of doubt over his deeds and actions that he had taken to escape the shackles of the Jedi and purge the sickness of their old dogma. But when he saw her again, he could not escape all the old feelings of an impetuous, weak, and foolish young man who'd take naps with her under the cherry blossom tree. They were the old feelings and the new. What had once been a small, spirited, sun flare had grown into a ceaseless, constant, and blinding ethereal creature whose endless beauty had embodied the light itself._

_Under his uncle's mastering he had only saw the restraints, the old rituals, and the tired, rigid spirituality of the Force. He only knew not what to do, what was forbidden, the fear behind each lesson. Placing on the helmet, Kylo Ren had become the embodiment of darkness, never seeing the appeal to the light any longer. His lamentation was only in his lasting attachments to his mother, his father … and a little girl that he searched high and low for after the ramble had been slaughtered._

_But when confronted so many years later by this goddess with the face of love, he was nearly blinded, overtaken by the nagging voice in the back of his mind that he did not belong in this conformity. He had been a being that had once thought himself invincible to the light, now completely enraptured by the sentimentality of memory and the sheer power that the girl possessed._

_Nearly driven to madness, he tried to escape the pull of her, doing deeds, too dastardly to imagine for even himself. All in the vein attempts of bravado and need to prove that he was who he always had been. That he was not the weak and foolish boy that no one cared for and listened too. But he could not escape her, could not escape the snowy battlefield in which he saw her in full grace. Nights and mornings he tossed and turned, seeing her face, hearing her voice softly, silkily calling to him in his quietest moments. Slowly, purposefully, weakening him from his resolve, till he could not sleep, could not close his eyes without seeing her. She was inside him, his mind, his body, and spirit, standing at the dark abyss in which nothing escapes offering him a hand out of the shadowy purpose he had set for himself long ago. To frustration, to rant, to surrender, his_ _**Rey** _ _of light still followed everywhere he went. His only resolve then was to do one thing._

_And that was to kill her._

_There was a chance, a set date, a set time, and set place in which he would face her. Trained by the same master that had failed him, she would meet her doom by the same contrary chaos that he had escaped so many years before. He would slay her, destroy her, snuff out the blight that was crushing the life out of him without fail. He'd suck the light from her lithe body and leave her till the darkness consumed her … so she might join him._

_But their clash never happened._

_Kylo Ren could not escape her pull, could not escape the memories and the feelings that had once grounded the madness in love and patience that he was once again confronted with in his rage. She knew now, she remembered, the naps, the hugs, the smiles. She'd fight him if that was what he wanted, they'd fight till they'd collapse. If he wanted he could suck the light from her and she'd let him. If he wanted her, he could have her for any purpose that suited. And in return all she wanted was her friend back._

_She wanted him back._

_A slender shadowed figure paced forward toward the heaving man. Her steps were gentle and quiet, not the stomping bravado of the man in front of her. There was a sense of caution in the air from the hooded figure and the trepidatious beep of the blue and white droid that watched from afar. But the girl's posture was calm and considering as she slowly circled the figure. A slender hand reaching down and softly running across supple, weather beaten, black cloth on the figures back. Her curious fingers caused the emotional man to halt everything, maybe even time itself._

_A frown creased the girl's brow as she ran her hand up his neck and into his black curls. Softly, familiarly she stroked and twirled them through her slim fingers. Slowly a mischievous smirk touched her lips, an old expression for an old tactile feeling of comfort. Tilting her head she slowly slid her hands down to his pale cheeks and softly lifted the man's bowed head. Their eyes locked and through them there was a flashpoint of recognition of a past life, of this life, and a thousand others through the bending and binding of millions of other universes._

_He looked up at her and a single tear fell, a single tear for a dead father, for a dead rabble, and a dead boy that he knew she'd never find. But she only bit her lip and examined the face anyway. He let her silky palms feel the smoothness and the scratch of his cheeks. She framed his face, a digit running down the scar she had given him. Her eyes narrowed in a glare of one that was looking for the picture through the visual illusion. She slanted his eyes, pulled his cheeks, and rubbed his ears, observing him as a painter or sculptor would a piece of art trapped inside unmolded clay. From afar the hooded man glared in confusion and the droid whistled._

_After a long moment she dipped her head toward him. Quickly the black haired man moved his away from her in self-revulsion. But she caught his face and shook her head in a reassurance of his sudden protest of a reward he did not earn, and never will. Tears fell from his eyes at the way she looked in the sunset. It was her grace, the forgiveness that he had no right to be given. She leaned forward again and this time he let their lips touch. Her hand cupped his cheek as she pressed down on him. There was no fire, and there was no electricity of passion. There was only a feeling of righteousness, of puzzle pieces coming together and fitting. Their souls, the torment in one another's mind, and inability to escape, they were all interlocking chains baring them together. They had only become satiated, calmed, and relieved when lips were locked and arms held the waist. When they became a whole, bonded, did they know the cure for their shared madness._

_When they broke apart, she left an intuitive signature of a smaller peck on his lips before she lifted her head back up. In that moment in the aftermath of the fire in his mind being dowsed by a bucket of water, he seemed dazed. In the clearness of the sunset and his mind he looked up at the girl and saw only the figure she had always been. She was somewhere between an ethereal goddess and avenging warrior, surrounded in the bright of the light all around her. Then he knew that there was no escaping, no blackness he could surround himself inside that she could not penetrate, could not find him inside._

_He loved her._

_The girl saw the light in dark eyes and the stricken look on the man's face as he came to his own awakening. An awakening of a truth she had known since the first time he stepped off the Millennium Falcon all those long years ago._

_A wide smile of pure love came over Rey's lovely face as she spoke in a whisper._

" _There you are, Ben."_

* * *

The whispered voice of a beautiful angel was carried on the chilled fall wind of a forest and disappeared. Now she only lived on in the flashes and quiet sorrow of a hooded figure that had stopped in front of the dimly lit cottage. His vision focused on the figure of a slender young barmaid in a silky uniform who had stepped out of the hazy warmth to enjoy the night's atmosphere. Her lovely pale face was shown in the twin moonlight of the world, her dark hair glossy and in a bun, freeing pointed ears.

For a moment's breath, for a heart's skip, he could almost imagine the ghost of a girl standing in front of him. Her mischievous smirks as she bit her thumb. He saw the way she touched things with the saintly curiosity of a new freedom away from hot sand and dry air of a graveyard. For anguish's moment she was there again, he could almost touch her. He swore she was there, her green eyes watching him as she sat perched on a barrel. The soft smile she gave him was a stab in his heart. Regarding him coyly, she might have said something memorable and perfect in its simplicity.

Suddenly a tall brutish figure with a fiery red beard and facial tattoos threw the door open. In his large hands a grey Dug struggled snarling in Huttese at the pointed eared indigenous. He threw the creature into a leaf pile. A howl of laughter rang out as all different eyes of shapes, colors, and numbers watched from the frosted windows. Turning, the brute's voice boomed like a canon to the ghostly figure watching. The girl was startled into motion leaping off her perch and rushing back inside. She only gave a moment to the hooded figure who watched her. She gave one last smile toward him. He might have returned it. But the brute grabbed the girl's arm and gave her shake as he threatened her in a language the hooded figure did not know. When he was done he pulled down a strap on her uniform to expose a pale supple shoulder and gave her a hard swat on her rear. It was hard enough to make a tear run down her cheek as he herded her inside.

The Dug was still cursing as he walked away on his hands, but when the mean bearded owner turned to the hooded man, he paused. The wind changed directions as something dark and dangerous from a previous life was awoken. Somewhere deep inside the brute knew that laying his hands on his slave girl in front of this dark figure was something he'd learn to regret. He was twice the tall man's size and he had not an ounce of fat on his rippling warrior's body … but he took a hard swallow and averted his eyes as he slammed the entrance door.

Alone now with only his thoughts, the dark figure steadied himself with a hard breath visible in the cold. When he closed his eyes he could still feel the ghostly presence of his angel. For a moment he thought that she might be inside, waiting for him. But it had been a mistake. What was inside was not her, but a part of her that she had left behind. Inside was a map to fixing all the mistakes he had a lifetime to make. Inside was a way to having her back.

To save her.


	3. Chapter I

_"Even before my father's fathers_  
_They called us all rebels_  
_Burned our cornfields_  
_And left our cities level_  
_I can still feel the eyes_  
_Of those blue bellied devils_  
_When I'm walking round tonight_  
_Through the concrete and metal."_

_"I was born a rebel_  
_Down in Dixie on a Sunday morning_  
_Yeah - with one foot in the grave_  
_And one foot on the pedal_  
_I was born a rebel."_

**_Rebels – Tom Petty_ **

* * *

 

**Chapter One**

 

The shadows danced and formed odd images on the far walls of the tavern. The mummer of three dozen conversations in twenty different languages echoed just under the current of jovial string music. The wooden hole in the wall was carved, sculpted, and constructed with the thoughts and dreams of every fairytale in mind. It was a representation of a different culture, a hostel built in the prelude to a grand interstellar war between two ways of life.

Wormhole technology integrated with lightspeed travel brought the Draken from the far reaches of the Unknown Regions. The first contact with a new alien species was a beacon of hope during the closing of conflict between Republic and a dying First Order. An undiscovered culture, a civilization of unknown species was a phenomenon unseen in thousands of years of recorded history. As the conflict between Light and Dark tore the Galaxy apart, trade and peaceful intentions brought many refugees from the wars of the Republic to Draken space. In return Emperor Kange set up trading posts and colonies in the Mid and Outer Rim on many uninhabited worlds as agreement with the New Republic Senate. The cultural expansion and integration meant and sold as a brighter tomorrow. Places like this cottage just a decade ago teemed with all races of the Republic, sampling a taste of the _renaissance_ of a civilization on the other side of the universe.

But war had changed that.

Crafted buildings and cities born of fairytale beauty turned to foot hold launching points for Draken battle groups into Republic space. Enchanted colonies became the famed blood baths fought in space, atmosphere, and through forests to recapture what had been given to the blessed travelers. The cottages, hot beds for spy rings, were captured and razed. Their owners imprisoned or deported back across Draken lines. Those who operated out of sight of the Republic and Jedi's eyes became a hiding hole and den for the hard luck cases of both galaxies. Three years after another devastating war their main purpose was trade. And here, in the shadows of society, their trade was black market goods. In places like this you could find the bejeweled and crested family heirlooms taken as trophies of war from sacked aristocratic palaces and manors of dead noble families. For a painting of a beautiful silver haired princess you could get a case of prewar alcohol from an outlawed brand on the moisture farms of Jakku. If that was not your speed or taste there were many other contraband items from a proud militaristic aristocracy in its twilight.

One such contraband stayed out of light and out of sight as much as she could. Setting tankards on the table of two cackling Rodians, her soft eyes were cautious not to be noticed by the green skinned creatures with snouted mouths. Where she came from, there were many different types of races. But their differences came to hue of skin, their height, and the shape of ear. With the exception of a very few outlining peoples, they were all humanoid. Here, a million light years away from her home, in the heart of the _barbarian's_ space, there were hundreds of creatures of diverse shapes, sizes, appendages, colors, and sets of eyes. They spoke many other languages and for the most part had no shred of honor amongst them.

The barbarian's culture was based on gain, market, and trading. Her brother had told her that it made all of those born in the Republic liars that were indoctrinated in greed. A part of her felt dead inside, When she could still hear the ringing of his rants of passion in her ears knowing that she was now one of the many objects that these creatures bartered and traded. They'd cover her with yards of silk next to the fermented fire water and sculpted pieces of art of famous Lords and Ladies of Draconian history they stole from her people. She had never been more grateful for the Y-Wing snub fighter that eviscerated her brother in his trench on some forsaken planet called Solis. If he saw what their own uncle did to her to save the family ranch from Rotta the Hutt, she'd throw herself off a cliff than bare the shame of his reaction.

The girl had seen her first droid when she was but a little child. It was a mechanical invention of the barbarians. They were emotionless, programmed, made for one purpose. It was grotesque, unnatural, and she cried afterward. These machines of wire and metal had no knowledge of anything but a meager existence of servitude, of conformity, of lifelessness. She had told herself then she'd die before she'd let that ever happen to herself. And tonight it was more than just a threat growing in her mind that was becoming a reality more and more, night after night, day after day. Washing her body under the watchful eye of others, the things they had made her wear … not even so much as a breath of fresh air without a bruise on her rear end for not asking permission. This enslaved life filled with the smells, touching, examining, and chuckles were all parts of the tormented chorus to a humiliation she could no longer bear. When she closed her eyes she used to see the clean air and blue skies of her home. The night sky and its star fields were magical in wonder, the vastness of space nothing but far off stories. Now when she saw stars, she saw the cold lifeless vacuumed abyss between her passing hands. Her sky filled with ships of every make and model traveling with their goods given for her beauty and dignity. She could no longer taste her mother's cooking or remember what it was to touch the first winter's snow of home. She was forgetting what it was like to be free, to be herself. They were turning her into a machine … and the cliff overlooking the sea beyond the forest looked more appealing than ever before.

A simple leap was all it would take.

"That would be a waste …"

A single tear watered her glassy eye as she turned away from the hiccupped laughter of the green aliens to the bar behind her. There a human man stood over the polished counter nursing a drink. He wore an old Resistance pilot's jacket of worn brown leather, sandblasted, and handed down over the decades. Its supple red patches, their meaning obscured now, cracking in age. Everything about him from his black combat trousers to knee high boots screamed "hand-me-down" and rugged like his jacket. Was he a man of limited means or just sentimental for a time he had only heard of?

She squinted in the half light of the candles hanging overhead, but his face was shadowed. "Excuse me …" She said politely with a curtsy like a high born lady she had seen from afar in the markets of home. She didn't know why she did it, but it seemed appropriately submissive in fear of offense that could end with her in restraints again. She involuntarily shuttered at the very reminder of the last offense she gave to a patron that left her nakedly restrained and exposed to the night's biting cold air in punishment.

"Don't worry, I rarely voice strongly worded reviews for flustered slave girls."

She stopped dead in her tracks at the cocky nature in his youthful voice. Hugging her tray to her chest, the girl took two steps toward the man and stopped. He seemingly could hear her thoughts as if she was speaking them aloud. She leaned closer to the study in shadow and candle light.

"How are you doing that?"

"Doing what?"

He asked back with laconic innocence after downing the rest of his drink. She leaned closer as if to hear the truth or lie come from the beating heart of the man himself. He turned and looked right back at her with a confident smirk. She was surprised by what she saw.

He didn't look like the type of creature or human that could be found in a vile hive. He was a young man, but there was an inherited sure-cocked attitude that was at home in a joint like this. There was a sense of danger here that he needed in his life. After years of being where the action was, a place of peace and quiet would be uncomfortable as it was unsettling. The tavern and every other den of scum and villainy in the Outer Rim gave the adventurer a justified edge that suited him just fine.

Her sudden smitten curiosity was overruled by the spark of darkness in him. She could tell that the tankard he just downed was not his first tonight. She could smell the alcohol on his breath and see the trouble on his mind. Being around places like these long enough, the pretty girl with a bow in her hair knew when someone was looking for trouble, especially the kind she had been trying to avoid.

She turned to leave again. "My mistake." She said softly.

"It is, if you jump off that cliff tomorrow over that squat, worm riddled, slug, like Rotta the Hutt."

Conversation died around them at the mere mention of the gangster's name. A cold chill ran down her spine as the music continued and the conversation quieted by a half. Everyone was watching the pretty barmaid with pointed ears and a tight silken uniform. She turned to find her peer was now leaning back against the bar. His cocky nature seemed muted. It was supplanted by a serious look of earnest sincerity for her. It was enough to make her cry …

It had been so long since anyone cared.

Suddenly their moment was interrupted by a tall shadow that came between them. He was seven foot tall, blue vine tattoo work stretching down from bald head to his thick and braided ginger neck beard. The owner was an imposing figure that was completely silent. His dark blue eyes cast in a shadowy danger upon seeing this stranger, wearing the symbol of the enemy, arrogantly entertaining his girl. The two sharing a random moment of some emotional residence was not only the wrong kind of interaction but bad for business when it appeared that just any Republic moon-jockey could charm his prized beauty.

The brute's big hand bruised the girl's pale arm as he yanked her violently away from the young human. She made a soft hitch of protest as he dragged her away from the patron of the wrong kind for the tall Draken's taste. There was a rip-roar of comic laughter from the other alien creatures as the crowd watched the pointy eared brute drag his slave to the back.

"The lady and I weren't finished."

A voice rang out in challenge. Suddenly everything except the jovial pipe and drums in the background went quiet. All eyes fell on the Star Pilot in the old jacket who strode away from the bar boldly. Everyone else stepped back the moment the lumbering mass of muscle stopped. The girl moaned in pain as she was slung onto the floor, one meaty finger commanding her to stay violently.

The ground shook with every step as he backtracked to the young human. In his passing shadow every creature and patron escaped the other way from the building confrontation. The youth didn't move a muscle nor flinch the closer the colossus got to him. There were far scarier things in the Galaxy than the brute and the young man had already seen them all.

It also helped that he was two pints in already.

The tall Draken used all of his size to tower over the smaller human. But his opponent seemed unintimidated. When he bent down to come to eye level with the youth he saw the dark spark in his green eyes. There was no denying that the human was relishing this moment, somehow knowing that this was how this night was going to end. He was angry and bitter of a past that haunted him … and tonight he was looking for a fight.

The brute didn't say a word, he simply growled with ill-temper in the boy's face. His nasal breath pushing locks of sandy dark hair out of his face. It should've been enough for anyone else to back down and start thinking about that heavy oaken door behind them. But faced with the large odds, the star pilot was implacable against intimidation. He responded by taking a deep confident sniff inches from the sweaty face with a wild feral look.

"I've killed enough of you pointy-eared bastards to know you bleed blue. But tell me … when I knock you outta the box, am I gonna rattle that marble in your head, or am I just gonna disturb stale air?"

Blue eyes nearly glowed as they widened just a touch at the level of venom that had never been spewed at him before. It had been a long time since anyone had ever talked to him that way. Not since he was a normal man's size as a child. A touch of red matched his hairy face as there was an audible reaction from the crowd. There was little left to do at that point. The brute hadn't planned on reliving a war that had already been lost, or fighting an occupation that was here to stay. But he was willing to remind at least one Republic star fighter that democracy hadn't taken over everything yet.

There was a physical groan from the crowd as the young human went sliding across a polished table, taking skirt, candle, and half drank tankards with him to the floor. The large brute swept a look around at the rest of his guest, fist raised in a fighting stance. Though no one was near him, they all took steps backward in acknowledgement of the violent public service announcement.

With the tone set, he stomped in a rage toward his slave girl. Her eyes were submissively cast downward has he collected her again. The sound of silk ripping echoed as he tore her dress open in preparation for punishment that awaited her in a shack in the back. Her sob of defeated humiliation was overshadowed by a call to the violent slaver.

"Didn't anyone ever tell the Moof Milker who spawned you that it's poor taste to frolic with female Wookies …?"

The Republic pilot pulled himself out of the wreckage of the Rodian table. He shook his old jacket free of debris. The arrogance of his fearless smirk never left his lips even as he cleaned the blood off the corner of his mouth with the back of his hand.

"Especially the ones that look like you …"

There was another audible reaction from the crowd at the sharp, merciless questioning of the Draken's manhood by the human youth. This time there was thunder and lightning that flashed through the hard alien. His quiet, severe, attitude cracked at the young man's tauntingly baiting tone of superiority. It had been widely known for years and years, that the Draken were racist luddites. Many believed that the wars had been fought not for expansion or tension between culture, but the doctrine belief of the Royal family and their aristocracy that any race not humanoid was a blight on the galaxy. The Republic was a baseless faction of degenerate groups of species … and humans were the worst of all of them. The very hint of the idea that somehow the large Draken was of lower standing to the young human was by the very definition offensive.

Throwing his half naked girl against the wall with a smack of skin against wood, he charged at the youth in full attack. He led with a heavy swing, trying desperately to knock the Star Pilot's head clean off. But this time he met nothing but air. The youth ducked under in a flash of reflexes that didn't seem natural. As he sprang up, he grabbed a brown bottle of acidic tonic by its long neck. It shattered on contact as the youth clubbed it into the large Draken's head. He hit him with a force of blow that was beyond his strength. But what could've killed some men, and leave unconscious stronger ones, only stumbled his opponent.

Not wanting to lose the momentum, or risking not getting out of the stupid thing he just did alive, the youth charged forward. A double grip sole of a supple knee high boot made contact with the Draken's solar plexuses, sending him keeling over. Then, he hit him with a vicious upper cut that jerked his head back. The young human suddenly began sending him backward to the wall of his cottage, following through with powerful haymakers trying to get him to the ground.

All around them chaos broke out as tankards, bottles, plates, and blaster fire flew everywhere. Low lives, thieves, and skid row outlaws began grabbing items, amongst the distraction, and fleeing. Yet they only ran right into other pirates looking for their cut of free contraband. Soon a private fight turned into an all-out bar brawl as jovial string and pipe music played over creatures, Draken, human, and droids punching, biting, scratching, and grappling across the floor.

Fist to fist and eye to eye, the Star Pilot and Slaver stood toe to toe. The hard breathing youth hit the brute with fists that had the power of something more than human strength behind them. Blue facial tattoos and blood mixed together in a giant smear of vine work and broken glass shards. But the large pointy eared bruiser was still on his feet despite the punishment.

Suddenly a metal hand caught the Star Pilot's striking arm mid-swing. Being swung around he came face to face with the metal insect head of a rusted protocol droid. 4-LOM the droid Bounty Hunter took the pause of surprise on the youth's face to punch him there. Winded, he stumbled backward, right into the waiting grip of his reptile partner. Bossk, the lizard fiend and Wookie poacher held the youth in place as the droid came for a second pass. But his target jerked his head to the side in the last moment. The metal fist of the protocol droid instead hit the yellow flight suited trandoshen with a sickening thunk right between his slit eyes. Leaning back against the concussed reptile, the young human placed both soles into the droid's chest and sent him flying over the bar. Using the aftermath momentum, he flipped the other Bounty Hunter over his shoulder and sent him crashing through a crafted table onto the saw dust littered boards.

He only took time for a sparked moment of intuition that came from a transcendent power, to read the sudden ambush. He felt as if the two bounty hunters had targeted him on purpose. Despite their own personal sorted history of conflict over the span of his young life, based solely on his last name alone, he got a distinct gut reaction mid-fight that they were watching him on purpose this time, waiting for something … or someone.

Suddenly a hulking wild beast came rushing at him from the chaos in his distracted moment. The bloody brute flew into him shoulder first. The pilot was taken off his feet and crashed back first into a support column of rose and ivy carving. As he landed face first on the dusty wooden floor, he felt as if his lungs had closed up on him. He gasped and coughed trying to find his feet. Suddenly two large hands grabbed him up by the back of his brown Resistance jacket. He was slung violently down on the bar.

Through the shock of the slamming of his head on the counter, he didn't feel the first hit, though his face jerked to the side from the force of it. But the second punch sobered him to the pain. The bloody Draken was in a feral rage as he pummeled the bold pilot. By the mid-way point of the beat down, there was blood coming from the youth's mouth and nose. He saw stars and a fazing black shroud over the shadowed chaos in dim candle light.

As the Draken raised his fist again, he saw a crystal clear waterfall in the background of a field of wild flowers. A handsome older woman was urging a small boy to run to her embrace. Next to her a hooded figure of a remorseful old wizard had a sad smirk for the determined little boy with his grandfather's smile.

When he was hit, the pain brought on the image of a Technicolor nightmare of chaos. Titanic capital warships engaged one another at pointblank range. While around them, dueling and dogfighting Starfighters lit the field of stars above a lush planet like swarms of fireflies. From the cockpit of a silver and blue X-Wing, a rookie cadet whooped in triumphant glory as be raced in from one tear and out the other on the hull of a damaged Royal Flagship. But his elation turned to dismay as he watched it careen through the atmosphere of Naboo. He screamed in terror as the large ship he had crippled vindictively crash and level the city of Theed. The sound of the children and their mother's cry of horror on the coms were replaced by jovial music over a bar fight.

When the brute lifted his fist one last time, the hot air of his ragged breath reminded the youth of the ruined stone temple buried in the jungles of Yavin IV. Rolling black storm clouds were overshadowed by the blood red sphere in the wide open sky. On the top steps of the ancient temple was a slender, sleek, and pale prince with long silver hair and black armor. There was a vengeful hatred on his beautiful face that was illuminated by the vibrating sword aflame in his gauntleted hands. Standing against him was a battle hardened youth in an old Resistance jacket. Sopping and soaked, he was ready to fight their personal duel armed with a sleek chrome lightsaber he had constructed around a mother's powerful crystal. Lighting tore through the red hued sky above, while fat, tropical raindrops sizzled and evaporated against both the glowing blue and fiery blades. Both Prince and Jedi Knight were eager to get at one another, for one last fight to settle a war long vendetta.

The young man wasn't sure what he was going to see next. But he knew what he hoped for. And that was to see a young and beautiful woman that he could not remember. If life would flash before his eyes, than at least he'd spend his last moment finally seeing the face of a woman he had often thought about. She had only lived in his mind and the imagination built around his grandmother's stories.

He'd finally remember what she looked like after all these years.

But the brute only lingered above him. His face was strained, eyes bugged out, but his raised fist unmoving. He grunted and growled in exertion, but he remained frozen in his aggressive and violent stance. It seemed almost comical to see this gigantic mass of muscle remain incased in some invisible carbonate case. His eyes shifted and for the first time in his life he was afraid.

That was when the youth in his half-conscious state felt the room change.

There was a familiarity that could not be explained that warped the universe around him. It was a presence that had always been on the periphery of his mind since he could remember and now it had become stronger. He sensed the figure as a person in the dark knew that someone was standing nearly in front of them. No face, no sound, but a familiar scent and presence that affected the obscured atmosphere with a primal recognition.

The bar got deathly silent as if the whole world stopped and time itself was frozen. Then from the corner of the young pilot's sight he saw a shadow approach. It was tall and imposing, it's strides long and confident. A cowl made a face impossible to decipher as it calmly walked toward the dazed youth and the frozen brute. With each clack of boots on the floor boards it sounded more and more like the executioner's call on marshal drums.

He stopped inches from the Draken. He took a long and dark glare into the bloody ginger's eyes as if he was digging through his mind. When he was done the large alien let out a gasp and a squeal of pain. The hooded man only let out a cruelly indifferent snort to the frozen figure. He turned his back to him and leaned over the pilot. Candle light touched just under the hem of his cowl and a bar of visibility framed dark eyes. They were familiar somewhere between where dreams warp memories. The longer he stared at them the more he felt his mind wander to a place he did not know he knew so well.

_A young woman smiled as she lay on her side. Her eyes were closed as she gently slept in peace on a cubby bunk of an old TY freighter. But even as she smiled, it was in defeat as her opponent sat propped against her tight belly. Outlasting her was a baby boy with matching eyes, sandy dark hair, and cheekbones. All of which were obscured by the Resistance pilot's helmet that she had placed on his head during their impromptu midnight play date._

_When a tall figure walked by he paused at the cuing noises that received no answer. He turned his head and came upon a helmeted little child examining in fascination one of the three hair buns on the back of the sleeping young woman's head. He suddenly stopped as if he could sense the presence of the other. Eyes, obscured by the orange visor, watched as the tall figure leaned over and placed the back of a hand on the girl's cheek._

_Dark eyes so filled with conflict, remorse, and sorrow seemed almost at peace as the girl when he watched her sleep. His hand gently strafing her cheek as feather light as possible. The baby watched in fascination at the softness in his touch and the care that could only be felt by someone so close to them. The sleeping young woman was everything to this man. An anchor to a world he had felt isolated from for so long. He was consumed by the light that was wrapped around her like a warm blanket and he was content to forever be blinded by it._

" _He's too strong …" She stirred. "I need a teacher to show me the ways of parenting." She smiled through her whisper. When she turned her sleepy head into the man's touch it almost physically pained him in his moment of love._

" _Take him before he finishes me off." She tapped the top of the little child's helmet with a yawn._

_Dark eyes seemed momentarily troubled as they darted to the child who was now running a tiny hand over the woman's cheek. She moaned playfully as the helmet bumped her head as the baby experimented to replicate how the figure standing above them felt when he touched her._

_He seemed hesitant for a moment till the girl reached out and held his hand. She didn't say anything and she didn't have too. He was afraid and had been since the moment_ _**they** _ _were born. It was easier with the other one, the one that had her mother's beauty, her grandmother's spirit, and his perfect curls. But he had avoided this one, avoided the boy. Long nights had he stared into the crib, worrying, and afraid of how this one would grow up. Worrying how this one would see him. He worried that the same failings, the same misplaced resentment and suffering would fall on the baby as it had him. He was afraid of the tearing apart of a soul to which nothing, nothing could be done by a father that only wanted to protect his son. As the man's own father had tried and failed to do._

_But feeling her touch, it reminded him that he wasn't looking into a mirror when he saw the baby. He was looking at what impossibility and improbability had created between two souls connected by destiny. The boy was as much her as he was him._

_And that was enough._

_Quietly he grabbed the baby up into his long arms. Unfazed by the new position he found himself, the baby turned and looked at the man that held him. It was a rare occurrence that this happened, so rare that the boy didn't quite know what to do with himself. He looked into the man's dark eyes through the visor lens and tilted his head. But it wasn't till the man removed the pilot's helmet that it became real to the baby._

_Green eyes searched his pale face, tiny fingers tracing the line of his lips and cheekbones. He pulled the man's cheeks apart making a smile in his examination. The figure's eyes became glassy as the small child in his arms familiarized himself with the man's face. But it wasn't till the baby began replicating the motion that he had done to the young woman. It wasn't till he had placed a single tiny hand on his cheek that the tall figure had become stricken._

_For a moment he was back on an overlook where a man that the baby boy looked so much like had done the same thing. It was a moment of forgiveness for abandoning him, for being too afraid to come to him. In both hands there was more than just forgiveness for a broken man. There was an innocence of love that was unconditional. There was nothing he could do or have done in a previous life that could change or defeat the simple faith that bonded blood and soul._

_There was torment, sadness, and love in the teary dark eyes. He cried for all the emotions that he didn't know a father could have. The transference of love in this heart's beat when he was consumed with this unconditional devotion to someone so small. It was only then that he knew what his father had felt in his final moment, what his father had felt in every moment of the tall man's life. He knew now what he could never get him to say, felt the intensity of it, the indescribable feelings of a father's love for his son. All of it and knowing how he had spit it back in his face in his last moments of life._

_It was a notion that he couldn't bear to happen twice, never again._

_With a low sob he buried his face into his son's chest and breathed in his sent. The baby distractedly twirled his tiny fingers through his father's raven curls, cheerfully hugging his head. Turning, he watched in confusion as a single tear fell from his smiling mother's eye._

_The baby not understanding the true redemption that came from the simplest act of a child's love_

A hand lay softly on the young pilot's cheek. The freighter, the baby, the man, and the most beautiful girl that the pilot had ever laid eyes on; all of it was no more. The only thing that remained was dark eyes and a tall figure.

As he examined the youth's beaten and bloody face the black gloved fist at his side was starting to shake. He could feel an old rage, an old darkness, an old life start to immerge from inside the hooded figure. The hatred, the anger, the fear it was all coming back in that moment. The memory, the vision of the Falcon, the baby in his arms, it was like beating on a fresh wound. There was a primal, beastly, power that was felt in the energy field that surrounded them, and the rage only grew stronger the longer he saw what this brute had done.

The feral power and darkness that was infesting the barroom was becoming too much for the youth to handle in his beaten, punch drunk state. His world began to fade. His consciousness held on long enough to see the hooded figure turn sharply toward the Draken slaver and place his palm up to his frozen face.

Jacen Solo's world slipped in darkness to the terrible sound of a blood curling scream of a slow, tormenting, death that echoed through the forest to haunt the autumn night

_._


	4. Chapter II

**Chapter II**

_Tarahill_

_Ancestral home of House Ardex_

_Occupied Space_

The wind whipped the manicured grass of the hilly pastured shires, making strange images and patterns on the lush green canvas of nature. The bright sun of spring brought warmth to the frigid temperatures that had lingered longer than most years in the northern hemisphere of the small planet. It had been a harsh winter that was filled with hard freezes and deep snows. Not a day had gone by that one did not feel the bite of the deadly cold nor the nights wrapped in furs by a roaring fireplace as the blizzards rapped at the window panes. The long dark of the endless frozen months seemed to last forever, making everyone wonder if warmth would ever return to the pale sun again. Relief however was dashed and brought all the more of a pain in watching the cold recede only to unearth all that they had lost in the oceans of mud and decay of the dead things trapped within the frozen accumulation. It was a filthy and grimy desolation that defeated many a soul that were already beaten down from these last four years. The fifth anniversary of their woe was within the week.

But today, oh today, if there was ever a time for the rejuvenation of spirit it was this afternoon. The moment the young woman woke up this morning, her eyes drawn to the misty fields beyond the town as orange and purple touched the morning dawn, she knew that today was going to be a good day. Lying in the plush field, riding vest tossed aside, a beautiful young maiden basked in the clean air of spring. With her silken blouse unbuttoned and opened, she let the warmth of the sun caress her bare milky skin. Her breath was long and languid in peaceful pleasure of freedom in the simplest form. Hand behind her head of thick raven ringlets, the girl reached into her sack and ate the fluffy white sweets and stared up to the sky. The soft clouds that floated above were thick and ample, creating many an odd and wondrous shape in the wide open of the atmosphere.

She sometimes put them together in her mind with images that she couldn't remember where she saw. Sometimes it was an island in the middle of a great sea where a lonely figure found a new hope. Sometimes it was a snowy forest where a man of grey fought a beacon of light as bitterly as he fought himself. In her more melancholy moods a simple white cloud turned into a fiery royal flagship, breaking atmosphere and crashing into a beautiful city of peace filled with innocent people. A shout of dismay from a young cadet in a cockpit still echoes in her mind when she sees an X-Wing. Then she wants to cry over an anguish she should never know. The truth was that she saw many things that she couldn't explain. Her dreams were wild and vivid with images and feelings that held her deepest emotions in a vice grip. They were a curse of people and places she could never see, and a life that she could not reach and take for herself.

For as long as she could remember, the maiden had always had these dreams and visions. She knew things that were about to happen before they could, sensed people's intentions when they walked into the room, and told stories of events that had only happened in the vaguest memories of peoples hazy minds as if she were there. It scared the locals, made them uncomfortable to be around her, like she was a witch of some sort. It mostly drew the ire of her parents who had staked their noble name's reputation on taking her in their household as their daughter and fiercely protecting her when the war broke out between their beloved High King and the Galactic Republic of her people.

Somewhere out there is a destiny, a fate, which remains allusive. On clear days she can feel the pull, and on starry nights she can hear it call her name. But for a time being it's mostly just a nagging feeling that somewhere out there something important is waiting for her. Her parents have often said that most people feel this way about a quiet life, those who did not know strife or fear. They make up these fantasies of a greater importance. It helps them cope with the boredom of a sheltered existence. Offended and labeled ungrateful for the protection they and their name had given her, her mother and father had often chastised the young woman about these wild and crazy notions of a life amongst the stars, her crazy dreams of a planet in the far reaches of space.

But even in her guilt and in the threats others she still dreams of a sister enraptured in the light, a brother cloaked in darkness, and a father who knows both sides and keeps them in balance. When she thinks of their planet and closes her eyes an ancient robber in black robes who stole their knowledge for himself stands by watching her from afar. But for all of his twisting and dark evil, it's what's hidden within the many stolen goods he had taken that calls to her. It's his most prized trophy.

A beautiful, lonely, young girl he has imprisoned.

Every day she sits inside an arid graveyard of memories, looking to the short days and long nights, waiting to be found, waiting to be saved from that awfully lonesome place this evil one had imprisoned her inside. The years melting together, one right after the next, her memories of a life beyond the rusting machines around her dwindling in a slow decay of time bereft of hope. If she tries really hard she can almost touch this girl, see her sitting on the sand, looking toward the swift twilight of her eternal night. She says three names over and over again, swearing to never forget them, those she loves most of all. She speaks of a father, a brother, and … a sister. The girl speaks the maiden's name.

_Jaina …_

_Jaina …_

_Jaina!_

It was as if she was calling to Jaina to come free her from the clutches of an ancient evil. It was as if she was calling for the young woman to free herself from her own prison. Every day when she closed her eyes and relaxed she could see the dark sinister man in robes. Every day he comes closer and closer to her, like the black clouds of a violent storm on the horizon. Somewhere in the back of her mind she felt a familiar presence warning her to run from here, from this home of peace that she had only ever known. Run from this bosom of tranquility where she made friends, fell in love, and had many adventures in the woods and fields that seemed so big when they were all so small. But now in the coming storm there was a darker tint to those memories, every bright place and hidden pleasure of nostalgia was shaded in a looming shadow of a threat in her mind.

That something that was allusive to her for so long was now coming to find her. And she was frightened of all these feelings and visions she didn't understand that came with it. It was like trying to read messages sent to you in a different language that only you should be able to speak. She was desperate for help, but she had no one that was willing to listen.

As a human in the heart of Draconian space, she had often been told by the bitter locals as the war went sour that the only reason she hadn't been executed as a traitor and collaborator was that her adopted parents were the King and Queen of the system. Her reputation and asylum often helped being the childhood friend of Prince Toyne the heir of the Draken throne. As well as being the once promised fiancé of the famed Star Pilot Jagged Fel.

By all rights and in an ideal world her two lifelong friends should be with her. When she thought of the silver haired prince spending the lazy peace of a spring day on his aunt and uncles planet with his two human friends, a sad smile touched her lips. Jagged with his angry scowls and intense competitive nature trying to match the ease in which Jaina did everything. Toyne would be sitting down on the grass, watching and laughing at the one-upmanship that always existed between the two of them. Of all the people that would have listened to her about these dreams and phantoms that danced in her subconscious it would have been Jagged and Toyne.

She'd know what they'd say. Toyne would be quiet and reserved. He'd listen to Jaina and offer her level headed advice about staying in the here and now. He'd say not to fight it, but not to chase it till she knew what it meant. Jagged however would be very quiet, he was always frightened of her powers. He was a product of the First Order. His father and mother powerful Generals in the obliterated organization. His family name stretched all the way back to the Galactic Empire. The prominence of his name and standing in the old societies within the Republic was the only reason that High King Kange, Tyone's father, took him in. Sometimes Jaina thought Jagged knew what was happening to her, and that was why he was scared of her, conflicted by his feelings.

Jagged Fel had loved Princess Jaina Ardex from the first moment he laid eyes on her. Since they were little he spoke of winning back the family planet from the Republic. He'd take Jaina with him when he did. He had promised for so many years that he'd take them back home where they belong. They'd both live on his planet and do whatever they wanted together. And when Toyne would come to visit, they'd throw the most amazing parties, the likes of which had not been seen since the Death Star was christened during the Imperial days. She didn't feel comfortable about Death Stars and the Imperial Regency. But she'd nod and smile. He was her friend and she loved him. And all she wanted was to see him happy. It was why she'd have given anything to see him return home and reclaim his rightful place.

But as they got older, dreams turned to obsessions. Being human in Draconian space at the height of the Kange dynasty was not easy. Jaina had been blessed with the protected privilege of royalty, of being a princess. Jagged was the ward of the High King's War-Master. Though, a close friend of the Prince, his life was spent around the solders of the imperium, they were hard men who had no love for humans. His days spent absorbing their insults and mockery. He had earned their respect, but not their mercy, never letting him forget what he was. Jaina tried to help him, to talk to him. But his anger and need to revenge himself on the Republic became too great even for Jaina's soft words and touches.

She had come to love him as they got older, he was one of three human's she ever grew up knowing. There was a bond between them, a similarity of love and experience that drew them together. But she knew even before the war that she was losing him to this dark monster that haunted him since before he was ever born. In their youth, When he'd come with Prince Toyne to Tarahill, they would all sneak away to the "West Street Hanger Bay" to Poe and Finn Dameron's apartments above their hanger. The only four human's on Tarahill along with the heir to the entire Imperium, would sit together and watch Holocrons of the latest Republic Podraces that Finn would buy during their monthly runs to the Republic.

It was the last time they were all together, just before the war, that she knew that Jagged was lost forever.

As the Kingdom prepared for war, she hadn't seen Toyne or Jagged much. But she'd still go to Poe's hanger and watch the Pod Races, as if it was a religion. She had become a big fan of one particular racer amongst them. Jacen Solo, "The Blue Comet of Naboo". Dashing, daring, just the edge of danger to the way he flew. He made Jaina feel like she could do anything watching him go head to head with "The Black Gundark" Alleen Monteen through the rain swept streets of Coruscant. And when he won, Poe, Finn, and Jaina most of all, felt a burning pride and illation. There was only one racer they rooted for in Poe and Finn's house and the girl's heart.

It was at the time when the war broke out, when they all last saw each other. The prospect of all-out war with the Republic had frightened her. The Draken were Luddites, warriors, but restrictive on who could join their army. The Republic was technologically advanced, battle hardened from decades of war, and most importantly they had the Jedi on their side. But when she met Jagged that day, Jaina would've thought that something so wonderful had happened. Jagged had come to ask her father for Jaina's hand in marriage, Toyne their as his voucher of legitimacy. All that day he was kissing her, holding her, smiling. Despite her fear, she was happy to see him this way. It was after all what he had been waiting for all their lives. He was going to fight the Republic, to destroy it, and reclaim his home. Flying and fighting were the only two things Jagged Fel was ever good at, and now he'd be doing both for his future, for his beautiful bride's future, and their lives together.

They were going to celebrate her engagement by going to Poe and Finn's shop like they used to. All that week she and Poe were busting at the seams when Finn got the Holocron of the last Pod-Race of the season. The Championship Run at Boonta Eve on Tatooine. They were all desperate to see it, but Jaina had told them to wait so that Jagged and Toyne could watch it with them, just like old times. And at first that was what it was, the five of them, laughing and joking, smiling and ragging on one another. Poe and Finn were like Jaina's fathers, concerned about her well-being, grilling Jagged about where they were going to live and what she was going to do. But as much as it was fun, there was an air of sadness to the gathering. Even as Jagged had offered the two old bachelors a place on his planet, she could tell that they didn't approve of the engagement, or Jagged's attitude toward the Republic. There was tension growing throughout the night between Poe and Jagged, brought on by some melancholy of silent tragedy experienced by Finn who seemed guilty and accusatory of the boy who talked of the glory of the First Order in its prime. Telling him point-blank of all the things he did not know of what he spoke of.

She had remembered her evening slowly devolving before it even began. But it hit the breaking point during the race's introductions and opening ceremonies. They had all joked for months that Jagged was about to lose his girl, to a racer named "The Blue Comet", and he always joked that if he was as good of a pilot as Jaina and Finn had boasted, she might lose her boyfriend to him. But Jagged had never seen nor heard the name of Jacen Solo till that night. She felt her heart break, felt angry, and enraged from the very first moment she saw Jagged lay eyes on her favorite racer. She wasn't sure if it was the name or the Resistance Pilot's jacket the teenage boy always wore that sent the young Fel over the edge. From the very beginning, he began rooting, obnoxiously, against their racer. It was as good as blasphemy in the Dameron Household as well as the Church of Jaina. From the very start, Fel was suddenly a live and die fan of "The Black Gundark" as they thundered over the burnt sands of Tatooine. Finn took it personally and Poe and Toyne tried to keep the old and young apart, hoping to defuse the situation. Tempers flaring as the race went on, the house rocking with obnoxious cheering for opposite sides from both men. It nearly reached a boiling point when Solo fell behind in the first lap and Jagged taunted Jaina's fandom for the young racer right to her face. He was ugly and spiteful in his prodding jealousy of a peer he had never met. Jaina did not recognize the man she loved, then. She did not know this bitter, angry jerk, filled with so much hatred for someone she admired so much.

Solo had taken the race by an inch in one of the most dramatic finishes since a local boy named Anakin had won some eighty years prior. Immediately afterward, Jaina filled with a blinding rage she could not control, stood up and punched her fiancé in the nose. He went down on the hard floor. She raged at him for his behavior, for the way he was treating two men who were family to her. Toyne caught the man as he lunged at her. Both men she thought of as second fathers pushed her behind them as Jagged bucked to get at them, at all of them. He swore that he'd kill Jacen Solo, that he'd hunt him down and send her a hologram of his dead body.

The last thing Jaina ever said to the boy she had once loved so much was that she'd pray every day that Jacen Solo got Jagged first.

Afterward she cried and cried for days. Toyne had come to visit her, told her that Jagged was under a lot of pressure, that Jacen Solo was the grandson of a famous Resistance General. That he had good reasons for hating him, though he had no good reason for treating her the way he did. He tried to get her to forgive their best friend for his anger, and bad blood. She was all Jagged thought about, all he worried about. But a sixteen year old girl's heart was never an easy thing to heal. Her only wish was for Toyne to come back safely. For two nights in a rainstorm, she lay in her bed, and listened to Jagged scream outside her window for her to forgive him, to love him again. He stayed their every night until it was time for him to be deployed. But The Princess wouldn't and couldn't forget or forgive. He was not the boy she loved anymore. She could feel the darkness inside him, fermented like a bitter wine in the dark cellars of vengeance. He would never be the same after that night, and the war wasn't going to change him for the better. But most of all she hated herself for taking this attachment to a boy she didn't even know so seriously. But she couldn't help herself, The Blue Comet was as important to her as anything in life. And anyone who loved her would've respected and accepted how much the dashing stranger meant to her.

Jagged had recorded holo-vids for Jaina every week for years and she watched them, but it did not tame the resentment in her heart for their last night together. She saw Toyne over those years of war and even he began to change. He became tired, aged by the burden placed on his shoulder, and filled with the pain of the deaths of so many in wars that he did not believe in. She had heard he had lost his younger brother over the Republic planet of Naboo, when their father's prized warship was shot out of space by a Jedi cadet mid-battle. He was praised for his valiant death, crushing the enemy in a ramming maneuver that leveled the planet's capital. Emperor Kange, madness mingled with pride and sorrow had ordered his birthday be a Kingdom wide holiday, while the Republic named the prince a war criminal. In response to the Draken holiday dedicated to the murder of innocent human and Gungan alike, The Republic identified the hero pilot who stopped the blood sucking Royal butcher … a pilot named Jacen Solo. After hearing of the heraldry for the Boy Hero of the Galactic Republic who killed his brother, Toyne didn't want to talk to Jaina anymore. Jagged, who was quickly becoming the talk of the Kingdom for his valor in battle, Reaffirmed a public vow to avenge the King's son, a brother to him in his own right, by killing the young Jedi who felled him.

Years later he'd get his chance.

They told the Princess that the Blue Comet met Jagged in a duel over the skies of Takodana. X-Wing and Scorponox battled over tree top, skimmed lake surfaces, and chased through clouds. Two weeks later Toyne sent her Jagged's personal items. There was nothing to bury of her lost love, His gyrosphere was completely disintegrated by the TX-1138 X-Wing's blaster fire at point blank range. And though a hero of the Draconian people … as a human, Jagged Fel was not granted a heroes tribute, nor his victories honored in official burial. A life, a love, a family name of nobility in some parts of the universe, and there was nothing left of Jagged Fel to be remembered but a few items that Jaina buried in their favorite spot by a river bank in the forest.

It was the last time she saw Toyne. She still remembered how he looked. How much he changed in the five years since the young man that she knew had come to see an upset Jaina as her friend. Before they all went to fight his father's, meaningless, losing war. His violet eyes were haunted, his silver hair disheveled, and untethered. He was melancholy beyond reason. He let her hold him, let her comfort him, but it was no use. She could never know what it was like to be the last of a dying dynasty, to be the last of one's own house. To see the end of a proud people and for all of it to fall on his shoulders to be made right, when there was no reason left to do so. He was trapped by a name, by a destiny. He could not retreat, he could not surrender to his enemy. He asked for forgiveness, though she didn't know why. But she had granted it to him all the same. When he left to do something he knew she'd never forgive him for, it never entered the princess's mind that it would be the last time she'd ever see her friend and High King again.

Toyne was killed on Yavin IV in a duel with a Jedi Knight. The once heralded boy hero of the Republic had killed the last heir of the Kange Dynasty. When she heard of Toyne's death and the man who killed him, she destroyed her room. She flew into an uncontrollable rage, a swath of destruction in malice. She was completely overcome by the pure emotions and feelings of her moment of sheer devastation. All of Jaina's friends were now dead, all the smiles and tears, the adventures, and laughter of a childhood were now nothing but memories in five years of war. And both of the young men she loved killed by another that she had admired so much. It tore her apart, the feelings of hatred and anger at fate and destiny, but most of all it was the heavy guilt and her vicious self-loathing.

Because deep down she knew she should hate Jacen Solo, hate the Jedi Knight that had stolen her fiancé, stolen her best friend, and stolen the old ways of her subjects. But she still couldn't. She often went back over those races, watched his podracer tear through air, grass, water, and stone. In those holocron's she tried to teach herself to hate him, to seek revenge as any good friend, any good bride to be would. But it just wasn't in her to hate him the way she should. The princess wouldn't admit it, she couldn't admit it, but deep down she loved him. But it was not in the way in which she had ever experienced love before, not the way she had loved Jagged, nor the way she loved Toyne. Seeing the handsome youth brought on a connection deeper than any romantic or love of friendship.

What she saw in the Jedi Knight was the same thing she saw when she closed her eyes. He somehow led her back to the beautiful, lonely, girl on the desert planet, waiting to be rescued. The two of them connected, tethered together, unable to be separated. Sometimes she thinks that the girl is saying his name as much as she was saying Jaina's. When she thought of the sister, the brother, and the father, Solo was amongst them. He was on her far away planet. If she concentrated harder than she had before, she knew that he knew of what she saw. If she had mentioned a girl in the desert, the Jedi would know what she was talking about.

Today was supposed to have been a perfect day. But even on the most beautiful days, scars still pained the body, mind, and soul. The Princess told herself that today she was going to be happy, that no cold spell, no lingering sorrow of years of death and suffering would dampen the bright warmth of the garish sun's return. But all the same, a single glistening tear ran down a fair milky cheek. Her surroundings suddenly became too small, the field not wide enough, the forests too tame, and the rivers but streams. In her sadness, she felt so suffocated, every tree, rock, and blade of grass told a story of her life and every tale they told were all just reminders of what was missing. Even on a day like today.

She'd give anything at that moment to run away from all of this. Break her tiara, jump on the first merchant's freighter and leave this planet and all of its poisonous memories of happiness and love behind. Knowing that when this day was over that she would once again be surrounded by cold empty halls, filled with sadness and strife of a dying way of life. A gripping fear of waking up each morning and not knowing what tomorrow would hold. Wondering if someday a refugee freighter would be the only option left to her. Every year one more of the congress of great houses of the former imperium fell to the financial cave-in. Buckling under the immense responsible for paying off the debts of the war their High King had waged. The opportunistic and cruel Banking Clan of the Republic seizing palaces and regal planets a third the size of Tarahill.

She was resigned to give up all the optimism of her morning to the plight facing her and her family. As she languishing in all the painful happiness of the yesterdays in the summers before the war. That was when Jaina startled by a great and loud roar as a strong wind rushed over her. Her silken blouse fluttered over supple skin and her long tresses of raven curls whipped her face as she sat up. A cargo runner creaked and moaned over head as it broke atmosphere and buzzed the grassy fields below. Red paint covered a rusty exterior of the hammerhead designed ship that carried loads between farmers and ranchers of the occupied worlds.

The Kange Dynasty had nationalized all trade in an ancient tradition of a feudal economic system that was vastly outpaced and eventually crushed by the Republic's free-trade capitalism. In the years after the war, the only way that the down trodden farmers and ranchers could survive the great depression of their collapsed economy was to enter the Republic free-market. For that they needed ships and men who knew how to fly them. And there were only two men in Tarahill who knew how to fly freighters and wheel and deal with the embittered Draken markets of the former imperium.

Turning over in the plush grass, the princess blew her regal ringlets out of her green eyes and looked out to the rusty ship as it descended to the stone streets and buildings of the town and tall ivory castle beyond. Suddenly, despite her lasting sorrow and darker nights ahead, a girlish smile of youth touched her rose red lips.

Finn and Poe were back.


	5. Chapter III

_The hard sun over the burnt landscape had sunk low on the horizon. Sandy Mountains of dunes in the distance obscured the last throws of its godlike power over the desolation of wilderness. A cold wind began to whip from the east. The planet came alive with the crackle and pop of the temperature changes hitting the thousands of miles of scrap and metal tombs of some great battle that had happened many long years ago. The purple atmosphere hummed in the coming night like a taunt harp cord out of tune. The last sip of action and movement halted as the whole world went still._

_The limbo between light and dark in the harsh sandy world was an hour of peace from the hard days and cold nights that ruled the everyday life here. There was something whimsical and even beautiful about the sandy shadows in the colors of twilight. It was time for reflection, time to wonder about the thousands of things and places that lived beyond the scavenged ships and jagged metal, half buried in the sand. It was time for dreams and fantasies that escaped this desolation and into the pinholes in the curtain of night. Imagining and wondering what was out there. If in this, a galaxy, a universe of opportunity if there was anything out there for the hopeless dreamer trapped in the dunes and ironic ruins of a war for freedom._

_For a single, hopeful, moment, memories surface of tiny hands, tiny faces, and the rambunctious giggle of twin babies. It was not an unpleasant moment for a girl with no past and no future. She thinks of many a happy fantasy of if she had a family, had a person who loved her. She sees a face obscured by the shadows of this place, the endless remoteness of a life of labor and survival. The girl sees black curls, hears a deep and measured voice. His pale skin was soft to the touch, but it covers hard sinewy muscles that she cannot stop touching. She thinks of how quiet the man of her dreams is. Someday she is surrounded by friends and people who like her, love her. But it’s the one that sits apart from the party, the one with his own world that attracts her. Because, he knows how she feels. He knows what it’s like to be alone for so long. This man of her dreams, he sits with her now as he always has looking up to the same moon, the same night sky asking the same questions._

_Every answer leads him to her, as she is led to him in her own quest for knowledge._

_She chews her food and replays all the fantasies of a life she had lived in her own head. She thinks of the soft touches and anxiety of being lain across a blanket on the mossy forest ground. She blushes, reminding herself of all the comfort and fascination of a large hand tracing the muscular lines of her taught bare belly. Never knowing how garish, how worshipful this man of her dreams was to her tight body. How good, how natural it all felt when he stroked her so gently. The guilt, the hesitation it was all over the man’s face when he realized that she didn’t know what they were doing, even as they did it. The pleasure was confusing and addicting. But even in her fear and ignorance of this physical intimacy she knew that he’d never hurt her, never dream of it. In the illation of the aftermath, she had never felt more loved in her entire life as he kissed her sweaty feverish skin into a clouding calm of sleepiness._

_Then something happens after that afternoon, she feels it as it happens. She doesn’t tell him about it, or anyone else. Even night after night when they come together, completely in love with this man and the sensation of this new biological imperative he had introduced her too. But even after each time, that feeling she can’t explain doesn’t replicate. Soon she feels a growth inside of her, her power, her insight, her foresight, expanding. When her belly swells, she has no choice but to ask what is happening to her. But that’s when the girl’s fantasy ends. The rest of her imaginary life with the man of her dreams and giggling babies ends with a yank. Like smoke rings in the dark, it’s blown away from her mind and memory by some dark outside force indulging in the night’s cruelty of tormenting this beautiful girl. So as she looks out to the night she hugs her knees and says three names that cannot be taken from her._

_A tall figure suddenly stood behind her. He had a handsome face marred by stoic green eyes. His grown out locks of wavy, dark, sandy hair fluttered in the night. She knows the brown pilot’s jacket, and was very familiar with the same chrome blaster he wears on the back hip of his belt. The man watches her for a long moment as she averts her eyes and goes back to her food. Ankle high, insulated, weathered boots of black supple leather, stalked through the sand. Stepping in the footprints she had left behind on her nightly hike. His hand trailed the rusted metal sole of the destroyed Imperial AT-AT Walker that was the girl’s home.  She can tell he’s cautious, suspicious of this place. He knows the danger as much as she does, and a part of him wonders how he got here._

_He hopes with all of his heart, mind, and soul that this was not some new torment or trick to harass him. But the man lingered anyway, sticking his head into the darkness of the metal beast’s hold. But the girl only continued to eat, looking wistfully to the sky. With his own stoic look to the horizon, he slumped into the spot next to the girl. His breath was almost visible in his long sigh sharing the same view of the dying desert horizon. They were quiet for a long moment, the older youth getting used to the silence of this girl’s desolate reality. Her nasal breath was hot on his cheek as she turned and chewed through a studied frown._

_“It’s been so long …” The girl swallowed. There was a deep causal sadness in her polished accent as she looked back to the horizon. “I thought you’d forgotten.” Her whispered voice was taught with a million emotions. There was something hard and cynical about the look in their matching green eyes._

_“Tried …” He nodded. “Almost convinced myself that all of this … that you weren’t real. Just something **Plagueis** created to get at me, get at **Grandpa**. He’s made me look like chump so many times, chasing your ghost over the years. I guess after our last fight it was easier to believe that there was no use in coming here. Better to cut it out than live with the alternative.” The young man flexed a left hand.   _

_Seeing the action, the girl didn’t need to be told what was wrong with the limb. She gave a soft gasp and quickly put her plate down. Her slender hands took his left almost immediately. They were gentle, but frantic, stroking his knuckles, feeling down to his forearm. She concentrated hard, terrified of the question of how far **it** went. When she looked up she saw that the youth had his eyes closed, savoring the numbed touch of her soft hands. When he opened them he watched a single tear fall from her sweaty cheek. A look of self-blame and a deep sadness broke his heart as it did her. Knowing the responsibility for what was missing in her hands came directly because of her was a different kind of agony. For the young man, he would’ve given anything to wipe away her tear and take her face in his hands. But instead he removed his left from her grip. _

_The girl wiped her cheek with her dirty wrist wrapping. “Why did you come here?” She asked gently seeing the hard edge to the young man that she had never seen before from him. He reminded her of an old man that she had never forgotten, even in the few precious hours she had spent with him. But to her question the older youth was quiet and she was sure he wouldn’t answer her._

_“There was a girl.” He shifted next to her. “A Draken, sold into slavery to save her family ranch. She reminded me of you.” He shifted his jaw. “I uh … I tried to help her.” He shook his head and looked out to the darkening setting around the two. “I guess I thought that if I could save her … It would make up for …” He cleared his throat of emotion. “I just wanted to do something right for once.” He bowed his head as his voice cracked._

_The girl’s face fell watching the young man next to her who was suddenly resign by emotions of a string of soul crushing defeats when it mattered most.  Had he been much younger, even just young enough she might have cuddled him in her lap. But instead the beautiful girl, trapped in another time when her physical affection was all that was needed, climbed into his lap. Her hands were gentle and loving in a maternal way as she brought up his head to hers. She ensnared his attention placing her wet brow to his._

_“It’s okay …” She closed her eyes and whispered with a nod against his head._

_“I made a vow I’d get you outta here.” He sniffled angrily. “I promised grams, grandpa, … and myself a long time ago that I’d save you. And it’s not that I don’t care, and it’s not that I don’t … I just don’t know what to do anymore. I don’t know how to beat Plagueis and I’ve come at him so many times … So many!”_

_A small sob of frustration and anger escaped his throat as he relived each fight. He couldn’t do it again. There wasn’t enough fight inside him anymore for a losing crusade that had already cost him everything. It had been a life-long quest to live up to a legacy and set free a ghost that wouldn’t stop haunting him. Even the fiercest wolves knew not to chase the bait tied to a trap that had claimed its pack leader, and then its own left paw years later._

_He had lost faith in himself and his abilities._

_It was tearing the scavenger apart inside to see him in this pain. He was the only person she had seen for so long. Marking the time with how old he had appeared to her in each visit. Dying a little inside the further he passed her by in age. Each cruel slip of security in her prison was to show her off like some sort of high end dolly behind a glass case. She was only here to taunt those she loved and those who still loved her. Her sheer presence was destroying their lives, knowing that she was still here, somewhere deep inside. She had become a phantom, a wisp of unattainable hope. The girl would take any pain; she would endure any perverse or mutilating torment rather than being the gregarious instrument used to beat down those who she had laid her soul inside of._

_She was filled with anger, hatred, sadness, and suffering all in a vortex of power that was easily syphoned from her. She was determined then, as she had been all of her life. The girl would wait forever, bide her time, but no longer would it be for a savior to return for her. Not at the cost that had already been paid in the blood, sweat, and tears of lost battles and family. She’d have her moment someday, her chance to free herself and end this reign of terror once and for all._

_She was gentle in the way she brought the older of the two’s face close to hers. It was the touches, the reflexes of a girl used to caring for an infant and toddler, not the grown man the small boy grew to be in the many years of her absence. “Listen to me …” She said with a sputtered crack in her accented voice. “It’s not your job to save me!  It’s never been your responsibility!” She nodded with all the love in her eyes and all the sorrow of a lifetimes worth of longing in her voice. “You let me go, now.” Heartbreak was in the command that she soothed with a loving silky stroke of the young man’s cheek._

_Her words hit him. “No …” He seemed alarmed at the sudden prospect. All the hard edge left the young man’s face and for a second he was a child again, the same child who made a vow all those years ago._

_“This isn’t the life anyone wanted for you. It’s not the life **I** want for you.” Tears ran down her cheeks. “All the fighting, training, swordsmanship … It was all because of me, because of him.” She didn’t say his name, because she didn’t know it anymore. All she had was the burning feelings of what was missing in her heart now that he was gone. A voice that spoke in measured tones and long arms that wrapped her so completely. Thoughts of him, of the man of her dreams, only intensified her feelings for the young man who held her now. “It’s over now. Please, I beg you to hear me! I love you, please! You forget about this place, you forget about me, and let it all go now.” She nodded her head with a sob._

_There was a pause, his fingers twirling the loose locks of damp hair on her cheeks in muted fascination. “You don’t understand.” His voice shuttered in response to her emotional plea. He looked hesitant for a moment. There was some sad epiphany to the way his mind put it all together, something akin to defeat in his eyes as he reached out and gently took one of three buns of hair on the back of her head. He tugged it instinctively, as he had done once when he was so small. “You’re all I have left, now.” He shook his head and finally a single tear fell down his cheek._

_“No …” She leaned in and so gently kissed away the salty droplet with an old instinct that only someone who gave birth could have._

_“There’s another.” She admitted in a whisper to his ear._

_Just then there was an inky black pollution that fell over the pale starlight. It oozed and flowed through the quiet evening sky. Its thickening coagulation created dark images and creatures in the shadows of the dunes. She knew what was happening then, it was the same thing that always happened just as she regained consciousness. Every creature, every dark thing with red eyes and talons, they were all coming for her. And by the time they were finished neither young man nor girl would have any memory of her emotional pleas, their desperate embrace, of each other, and the princess she wanted so desperately for him to find._

_The girl pulled the young man hard into her bosom as the roar of thunder and the flash of lighting grew strong and intense. She flinched at the mighty power of the unnatural electrical storm overhead as the monsters drew near. She buried her nose into the young man’s grown out locks as she rocked him back and forth in her strong arms. She screamed over the storm and the grotesque mockery desperately, her final promise to him in a mantra spoken in all the long years of her imprisonment._

_“I’ll never forget!”_

_“I’ll never forget!”_

**_“I’ll never forget!”_ **

* * *

 

_Dantooine_

_Outer Rim Territories_

_Republic Space_

 

A loud caterwauling screech shook awake an unconscious figure. Green eyes seemed alert and on edge, startled from a desert world that was slipping away like the sand through his fingers. He sat up quickly to find himself lying on a red leather seat in a chrome booth. His Resistance jacket was folded under his head. His ears were assaulted by wailing horns, electronic synthesizers, and a course voice singing in Huttese. He followed the song “Lapti Nek” to its source. A sleek and glowing gold neon Holo-Jubox sitting in the corner. Behind the glass display were recorded holographic miniatures of the “Max Rebo Band” preforming their signature song from almost fifty years ago.

It was an old song for an old type of diner.

Jacen Solo turned his attention away from the synthesized jazz and to himself. He had a hard time remembering how exactly he got here. His mind was somewhere among the promises of love from a young woman whose face was fading fast in his mind. He had two, torn, bloody, napkins hanging out of his nostrils. His jaw was tender to the touch, like he had gotten clocked with something metal. For a moment he questioned if he could recall getting into a tussle with bounty hunters. With a shake of his head, he rotated his jaw and groaned at the clicking noise it made. Slowly he pulled himself into a sitting position in the booth. Pulling the bloody wads out his nose, he tossed them on the table. Jacen braved a look out the window and was immediately punished.

His throbbing head only got worse in the sight of the cold and bright autumn morning. He shielded his eyes and looked out across the dirt road and past the wooden rail fences to the acres of sweeping fields of golden grain waving in the orange tint of Dantooine’s atmosphere. Beyond the swaying crops, ready to harvest, he watched rows of giant wind turbines shadowed in the distance fields turn round and round. His eyes and unsteady consciousness followed the slow, laconic, pattern till his head began to mimic the motion. Feeling suddenly dizzy, Jacen turned and scooted away from the outside world all together. He bowed his head in his hands as he leaned over the edge of the booth.

Over the clatter of plates and steaming mugs around him, the sound of servos and rolling wheels came up next to him. Slowly, out of nowhere, a mechanical arm reached out under his bowed head and poked an item under nose. The smell shot Jacen with sudden adrenaline fueled by one-half disgust and the other half survivalist escape. The young man sprang back in his booth with a hard cough.

“For the love of …!” He shouted in anger.

All the patrons of the metallic, streamlined, diner gave a chorus of bombastic and wheezy laughter at the scalded cat reaction of the youth. Quickly, the young man whirled on the culprit who held the smelling salt in hand. It was an old and beaten looking astromech droid. With Naboo Royal markings that were all but faded, the tough little mechanic’s blue, silver, and white paint was starting to chip away after almost a century of use and service.

“I’m already awake!” He growled at his droid.

R2-D2 blew an annoyed electronic chirp at the youth.

 “Oh, well as long as you’re satisfied.” Jacen snarled with sarcasm snatching the smelling salt out of the droid’s hand. He leaned forward and gave a cautionary sniff and snorted in revulsion with another strong shake of his head.

With a twist of its turret head, the droid whistled at him with what one could only imagine was concern … buried deeply under an old man’s surliness after twenty-five years of dealing with Jacen Solo.

“Oh, right, I need to eat? After you stick this up my nose?” He shoved the item at the single ocular lens with a snap of his voice. “Why didn’t you just lead some tri-horn stag in here and have it break wind in my face, huh?” He gestured to his face aggressively at Artoo. The droid blew a raspberry at him and just began to roll away.

But turning his head back as he approached the far menu counter, the droid buzzed negatively at him.

“Oh yeah? Well, I’d pay real money to see you build a pen for it?”  

BBBRRRRPPPBBBUBBIIT!

“Hey, Watch it, old man … If I’m broke, you’re broke. You remember that the next time you have a strong urge to start leaking oil on the hyperdrive motivator, again!” He called over but the droid was already gone.

He grunted in annoyance at the old garbage can. There was never a saltier droid in the Galaxy then R2-D2. Nor was there a better mechanic in the entire galaxy than its saltiest droid. It was the paradox left to him by his grandfather. Jacen about twice a day warned the foul mouthed, ill-tempered, and always trouble making droid, that he’d spring for a BB-unit. But the truth was that he wouldn’t trade the droid for anything. He’d known him his entire life. They had been companions before and during the war. If a toddler taking rides on Artoo’s back didn’t make them family, than everything they witnessed from Naboo to Draconia Prime in five years of war had certainly put everything in prospective. Sadly, this knowledge was known by Artoo, which gave the old timer license to make his life miserable from time to time. He’d like to think he did because he cared, but other times we was sure all these eccentricities came from a loose wire that was dangling somewhere in that beat up silver dome of his.

Leaning back into the leather, he let his mind settle, his surroundings become clear to him. He knew where he was, but he didn’t know how he got there. When he tried to think all he could hear was a girl’s polished voice telling him to let her go. If he concentrated hard enough, he could feel her in his arms, her gentle touch on his hand, a single tear running down her cheek. It made him lift his left hand and flex it open and closed. He rubbed his other over the hairless supple skin below the knuckle. “My skin is not my own.” He muttered ponderingly.

He knew of this girl, but not a face, not a reason for her to be in his dreams. She’s always been young, beautiful, but sad, horribly sad. What she wants from him he can never remember when he’s awake. She has always disappeared, sweeping away any sign of herself, like footprints in the ocean. Jacen had been warned all of his life of these things, of these dreams, of this girl. His grandmother and grandfather clear and strict in telling him to never speak to her, never go near her, and do not reveal anything about himself in her presence. He remembered his grandmother’s stern warning that she may not mean him any harm, but she was very dangerous none-the-less. When he asked why this girl was so dangerous, if she did not want to hurt him, he’d never forget the ominous voice that came from his grandfather.

_“She’s never alone, Jacen. And you have no clue who might be watching the two of you.”_

Giving his fingers one last flex, he reflected on his grandfather’s ominous voice.  Something about the words and the girl made him reached in to the bandoleer strapped around the top of his black, insulated, pilot’s boots. He pulled out a jagged crystal data key and placed it on the table. Reaching into his jacket next to him, he pulled out an ornate item of beautiful frosted crystal encased in metal that was inscribed with Draconian Runes. It was some old love poem in a dead language. Leave it to the Draken to fight for a dying way of life and yet remain nostalgic for an already dead one.

Jacen Solo was a coinsurer of trophies during the war. For every Draken hero he killed, he took something with him as a reminder. He had often been accused by his comrades of being a _scavenger_ in another life. But he did it sometimes as a mark of honor from one warrior to another, such as taking a War-Masters fighting staff, a Crown Prince’s flaming vibroblade. It was a promise that their gallantry would not be forgotten by the one who felled them. But sometimes he took a trophy for ridding the galaxy of it scum ridden trash, a tiara off the broken brow of a psychotic butcher in a Prince’s uniform. But there was only one of these trophies that Jacen carried with him wherever he went. And he had taken it off the charred remains of a vicious, godless, murdering ace star pilot.

Anyone who had grown up in a home with _General Leia Solo_ would know the name Fel. Jacen’s grandfather, Han Solo, had killed the patriarch of the family in the months after the Battle of Endor. His Grandmother had killed the brother and uncle. Jacen’s father had hunted the rest of them to near extinction before Jacen’s mother had reined him in. So it was no big shock when Jagged Fel came out of the wood work promising to kill the young cadet, before any battle had ever been fought. Jacen’s cocky response was a promise to line him up right next to rest of the evil, death worshiping, trash heaps that two generations of Solo’s had buried.

For four years there was a lot of talking of the two meeting in battle amongst the stars, in the skies of some famed world, or vibroblade to Lightsaber on some distant battlefield. But in every battle each famed fighter had fought in, they had just missed each other. Like something or _someone_ was manipulating fate, destiny … the force, trying very hard to keep them separated. Toward the end of the war the Jedi Council had warned Jacen not to engage Fel. The Draken were on the run back to their own star systems, their entire, once Grand and Elite, Royal Army was now in full retreat back through the Stargate at the Rishy Maze. Peace was about to be negotiated with the Draconian councilor. An attack on the Draken’s favored adopted son, would destroy any hope for peace left and force a costly Republic assault on the Stargates and subsequent invasion into Draken space to settle the war once and for all. But with the prospect of a lost war, and a fight with Jacen Solo a long shot, Jagged Fel was consumed with hatred. His hunger to finally face one another only grew into madness that took control of any human senses he had left.

 The reports started coming in through the cortex. Non-human farming towns, outlining villages, refugee transports filled with alien women and children. They were all being destroyed by a Red, gold, and black Scorpionox. Jagged Fel was murdering innocent people, padding his kill ratio, trying to draw “The Blue Comet” out into a fight.  And while Jacen absorbed each crime, Fel’s mad emperor was draping glory on him for these needless murders of those they thought not worthy of life. But after the “Illerumm Massacre”, Jacen could no longer take it. The body counts and psychotic violence had left him no choice but to finally put a _stop to this mad dog’s reign of terror_ in the Outer Rim.

For years it had been a buildup from both sides. It was the great fight between the Navy Blue and Silver and the Crimson and Gold. The X-Wing, Verses, the Scorpionox, “The Blue Comet” going toe to toe with “The Great Space Duster of Tarahill”. Officers and enlisted men had traded bets and credits over who was going to win, years in advance. There was a time the winner of this private duel might have been hoisted on the shoulders of comrade and citizen alike and carried victoriously through the capital’s streets. But at the end of that bright and sunny day on Takodana, the winner of the long anticipated fight was expelled from the Jedi Order, demonized by the Draken, and the heroics that had once been so vaulted in an X-Wing and with a Lightsaber, forfeited by the Republic he fought for.

Impatient, aggressive, and impulsive actions that day on Takodana had cost the lives of millions of soldiers in the year of fighting that went on to pacify Draconian Space.

Peace had been achievable that month, that week, that moment, before pride, arrogance, and a history of hatred had come to their final conclusion. His victory over Jagged Fel had earned Jacen Solo nothing. Nothing but the hatred of the widows, widowers, and orphans who had hoped to see their loved ones return home in an era of new peace. Instead they were informed of their deaths on some Star System a universe away. The ghost of his emotional impulse to avenge a couple hundred lives rather than save millions still haunted him. His rise and fall as a Galactic Hero based around the reckless hatred of one man he had never met.  Nothing remained of Jagged Fel anymore, Just a name, a handful of stories, a music box, and a _girl_.

Taking the key, Jacen stuck it in the bottom of the crystal ornament. It gave metallic cranks, the runes rotating till they clicked in place, lighting up purple. Suddenly there was an illumination of holographic movement. The runes floated and circled to the sound of elegant and soft romantic string music. And dancing to it was a beautiful young girl. Somewhere in her teenage years, she had long elegant tresses of raven black curls that were brushed out and pinned back by a bejeweled tiara. Her green eyes were filled with life and joy as she moved her hips and swayed with the music. She was wearing a blue silken mermaid ball gown that fit tightly to her frame. White opera gloves lifted and twirled the smooth skirts as this princess danced. Her fresh and lovely smile directed right at Jacen with all the love in the world in her eyes.

Whenever things were getting hard, when the galaxy was closing in, and especially after dreaming of the girl in the desert, Jacen came to the princess for comfort. He didn’t know her name, where she came from, but she endlessly fascinated him. She was not Draken, and yet had all the markings of their royalty. It had been five years since he had taken the holo-crystal off Fel, and he had thought about her every day since.  He wondered who she was, where she was now, and what she might be doing. Maybe she was Jagged’s lover? Possibly she was his friend, maybe she was some sweetheart that he had his sights set on after he had mounted Jacen’s pilot’s helmet on his mantle? In the hardships after the war and in his endless quest to fill a childhood vow, this princess had become his talisman, his companion, and his lucky charm. Sometimes he thinks he knows her, somewhere deep in his mind she had always been there, calling to him. On some mad mornings he’d wake up and considers the notion that he’d go find her, take her away like she had been waiting for him all these years. But he didn’t know what he’d do if he did. Would he take her away, shake her hand, or just have a chance to touch her and know that she was real. In a world this bent, he’d have no problem admitting that he loved her.

_“There is another.”_

The voice of the girl in the desert echoed through his mind. And the more he thought of her, the more he was brought back to the desert in the middle of a mechanical graveyard. He thought of the girl that he had spent his entire life afraid of, and for some reason all he saw was his princess’s face. It was madness to think that somehow they were connected. Or was it just that he was placing all his impossible dreams on this princess’s milky shoulders? The love he had for her and the girl in the desert coming from the same place in a heart almost hardened to a sentiment that had almost become foreign to him.

 There were a lot of things that haunted him about the war, years after it had ended. Maybe it was why he kept the girl in the desert and the princess so close. Maybe it was why he saw them in each other. Why he saw them in everything he did. Fights and feats, from one side of the galaxy to the other, trying to prove that he was still the person, grew to be the man, he promised his grandfather, his master, he would be. That deep down somewhere inside him, he was still a hero. That even now, sitting in a diner on Dantooine, worse for wear, he was still the best and last hope for the galaxy, and for a girl trapped on a desert planet.

But after a night like last, he wasn’t sure he knew if he was even a man who could save himself, much less save someone from a Dark Lord of the Sith.

He took all of his doubts and fears to the twirling figure of the Princess in the captured music box. His eyes tracked her softly, watching the rippling shine of her gown as she twirled it, resting her head against her own bare shoulder as she swayed gently. He concentrated on her smile, on her ethereal appearance, focusing his mind and his consciousness on the folding and stretching energy field that held every atom and molecule in place and illuminated his world. He sifted and grazed billions and trillions of voices and minds echoing through past, present, and future. The smile, the beauty, the pureness of the light inside the regal dancer, he reached for it till he could feel her pull light years away.

 He felt wind, the fresh clean air of spring, and the freedom of a galloping animal she rode astride. There was sadness, a fear of a world and family crumbling around her. But in the moment there was a sensation of joy and excitement at something that she was rushing toward today. It was a relief, ice on a burn, something to look forward to that couldn’t disappoint. She was riding hard to be the first at some grand homecoming of a person, or persons that she had missed terribly. For a moment he touched her joy and it made him smile softly. It made him happy to know that this princess, whoever she was, wherever she was, had some happiness in her life still.

 But, somewhere on the fringes of their intuitive connection, he felt another presence. If he was standing a distance away, watching her, than someone was further still watching both of them together. It was an old guardian, silent and powerful, familiar in the most elemental way. It was a presence that was as parts of one’s self as speech patterns and personal ticks that you never notice you’ve had all your life, till someone points it out to you. That was the way that these watchful eyes felt when he sensed them for the first time. It took his meddling into another’s mind to notice that someone had been doing the same to him, to both of them, all their lives.

“Well, well, well, I guess I don’t have to throw you out with the rest of the dead fish, after all!”

Jacen Solo’s Force connection was broken by the rough but friendly voice. He quickly opened his eyes and focused, not on the princess dancing and humming in front of him, but past her to a large and tall figure lumbering toward him from across the diner. Heavy, bulky, and limped, the old, four armed, Besalisk wore brown pants and a white t-shirt that had grease stains and barely covered the brown alien’s pot belly. His bristly white mustache rippled under his labored nasal breath as he growled obnoxiously, sliding across from the young pilot. At once he came face to face with his old friend, Dexter Jettster.

“Dex …” Jacen acknowledged distractedly.

The diner owner looked at the beautiful girl, before he went back to the young man. Seeing the youthful flicker of disturbance at his presence, a devilish grin appeared on Dexter’s wrinkled mouth.

“Someone I should know about?” He motioned his head to the hologram.

The young pilot looked up. “I thought you knew everyone around here, Jettster?” He asked with a sarcastic prod.

“It’s a big galaxy …” He lamented. “And not everyone has the best … uh … judge of food in these parts.” He grinned cheekily with a wink.

At the double meaning, Jacen snorted. “Then I guess it pays that I’m a lifetime reward member.” He replied.

 “Yeah, next bar fight might even buy you a free half-sandwich at our Coruscant location, Solo.” The Besalisk chuckled at the distracted youth who was going back to the girl in his hand. He grunted and leaned forward in the booth taking a much better look at the gorgeous face and frame that was well worth getting distracted by.

“Are you finishing up or uh … do you two need a moment more to seal the deal.” He asked teasingly.

Jacen rolled his eyes at the crude insinuation. “Some of us are more romantic than others.” He twisted the data key with cranks that cut off the holo-projection of the slender twirl of grace and elegance. The four armed diner owner paused as the lingering notes of the girl’s giggles echoed in the booth. Then, after a long moment, the same devilish smirk of a Cheshire soul played over the scene.

“Sorry, didn’t mean to cut in.”

“Isn’t that your job, Dex?”

“Just trying to save you from heartache, Young Blood.”

“Heh, where were you when they pulled me out of my mom?”

“Swearing off women … probably.”

Jacen grunted. “You … Couldn’t imagine.” His shocked sarcasm accompanied the creak of his slothful slouch. Together, human and owner, turned to watch the Human, Twi’lek, and Togruta waitresses of a young, slender, and incredibly attractive persuasion move about the diner in tight, powder blue, latex skirts. There was something damning about the way Solo looked back to Dexter.

“Alright … alright.”  The old owner pointed to the pilot in chuckled surrender. “Three-hundred years of wandering the Galaxy and the Outer Reaches have taught me that lookin is safer than sampling.” He tweaked an eyebrow. “Something you’d be better off knowing sooner rather than later.” Jettster warned half-heartedly.

“So you heard about that, huh?” Jacen smirked bitterly.

“I don’t need to hear anything … that face is the face of a pirate after another man’s treasure.”  

“Close … another pirate’s slave girl.” The young man twitched in pain if on cue, rubbing his brow.

The owner gave an obnoxious growl of a laugh and gave a pound of the table. “Lust and Love comes easy and free, Young Blood, slaves cost money. Should’ve robbed his ship or speeder, I think he would’ve taken it a lot less personal.” There was hopeless affinity for the stupidity in the life decisions of the young man in front of him.

There was something hard and cynical about the way Jacen absorbed the ridicule for the heroic action.  “You should see the other guy.” He tried to cover the venom for the lecture with a shot back.

“The Constable is looking for you, so I can only imagine.” There was something disapproving about the way Dexter frowned.

The information brought on the memory of the blood curling scream of the big Draken brute before Jacen blacked out. A chill ran down his spine, but his inner pang of panic was covered with a clear of his throat.

“Well, it wouldn’t be the first time.” Jacen replied stiffly.

 “Must have been a hell of a fight out there.” He grinned again.

A baby, a mother, and tall man flashed in his mind. “You have no idea.” He shook his head.

“I believe I heard the Constable go at some length about this being Dantooine, not Tantooine.” Dex searched the youth for a reaction.

He got it with a dark look. “Could’ve fooled me, with a planet lousy with Bounty Hunters.” He glared.

The information seemed to take the old Besalisk by surprise. “Bounty Hunters?” He leaned in closer when the designation caused several looks toward them from around the crowded diner.

Jacen rotated his lower jaw with a wince. “Ran into 4-LOM last night.” He rubbed the bruise tenderly. “He’s here with Bossk. They ambushed me mid-fight with the big Draken.” He tapped the data key against the metal table in annoyance. “I wouldn’t have a bounty on me and my ship’s head, would I?” He asked with chastisement. If there was anyone who knew the underworld gossip, even a hundred years later, it would be artifact hunter, rogue miner, and Black Market expert, Dexter Jettster. 

The potbellied alien stretched with a self-satisfied grin. “Well I wouldn’t say it would surprise me.” He cracked his brown jowly neck.  

“Thanks …” The youth’s grateful reply was smattered with petulant sarcasm.

“Well, there’s the standing, twenty-seven year, fifty-thousand bounty offered by the “Governor” of Jakku himself, the always illustrious Unkar Plutt, for the head of your mom, and anyone she pushed out of her belly in that time. There’s the sixty-thousand in variety you owe Kajiklub. They tend to remember the slaughter of their gang by Darth Plagueis during your unsuccessful heist at the Banking Clan’s archives on Muunilinst.”

Jacen looked insulted. “I owe _them_ variety?!” He protested. “How is it my fault that Plagueis was waiting for us?” He asked with indignation.

“Tasu Leech seems to think that you deceived them. They were promised the gold from the Draconian Aristocracy’s war debt in the Guild vaults, and instead they were massacred looking for a Chancellor _Palpatine’s_ bank statements just after the “Naboo Trade War” nearly eighty years ago.”

“I never said anything about Draken gold. They invested in finding Plagueis’s original burial site. He was a Muun and a banker, they were entitled to all the money and treasure they could find in the Sith tomb. That was the deal.” Jacen snarled defensively.

The old owner just shook his head. “Well Kajiklub seems to have altered it. Leech isn’t interested in Sith Artifacts or lost Dark Lord’s tombs … They only care about money … and they’ve been waiting twenty-eight years to fry them a Solo. Now you’ve given them the perfect opportunity to settle old debts that your Grandpa racked up.” He gave a deep sigh and stared at the youth that threw his back against the red leather of the booth in frustration.

The young man gave a long sigh and turned sharp green eyes toward the Besalisk. “Speaking of things that are owed ...” He leaned in closer. “You got something for me?” He asked hopefully. There was sudden uncertainty and even a moment of discomfort from the large alien at the request. But matched at the determined look on the youth’s face he saw no choice but to engage in the business that had brought them to the planet in the first place.

Reaching into his apron pocket, the owner extracted a small item on a black necklace. It was a metallic sliver of crystal inside a metal shell. It was dark and coppery, covered in precise grooves. It was something old, very old, some might even say ancient. And it had been around Jacen’s neck his entire life. It was something important, something special, given to him by his father before he died. Or so he was told, since he had no memory of the man. It made the item sacred, unquestionably precious to Jacen. But it wasn’t till recently that he had come to notice the grooves. It wasn’t till he began hunting for clues about the resurrection the Darth Plagueis by some grave robber named **_Snoke_** , and the ancient Sith Rituals, that it occurred to him that what seemed like a meaningless piece of precious metal was in fact something important that had been right under his nose his entire life. Or at least he was desperate enough to think so.

 Jacen Solo hadn’t come to Dantooine because he wanted to get good prices on bread. He had come because Dexter Jettster knew all there was to know about the ancient artifacts of the galaxy. It was a trait and knowledge that came in handy when smuggling and peddling the stolen items with the help of Han Solo and Chewbacca during the Imperial days.

 “What you have here is a Korriban kyber-key, created around the time of the great Sith Emperor, Darth Vitiate.” He scratched his white whiskers with a low growl of suspicion.

“Moraband …” Jacen corrected with narrowed eyes as he studied the necklace in a whole new light.

“Korriban”

“Moraband …”

“Since when?!”

“Since I last looked at a Nav-chart!”

“What, were the Sith running from the tax collectors in the last hundred years?”

“I don’t know?!”

“You were the genius who broke into a bank just to look into their tax records, kid.”

Jacen rolled his eyes hard. “Can we get back to what’s important here?” He shook his fist with the necklace to make his point. “Moraband, Kyber-key, Sith Emperor.” He motioned him with a hand to jump back on the progress train.

With a curmudgeonly sneer the Besalisk continued. “It’s was a data key, used by the Sith to store important information. It’s one part circuitry and one part Kyber Crystal.” He explained.

“One part Kyber Crystal … why?”

“It makes accessing the data inside … exclusive.” Jettster drew out the end of the sentence with a lilt of mystery in his voice.

There was enough charm to pull an inherited frown that turned into a smirk out of the young man. “Exclusive to whom, Dex?” He asked with just enough annoyance for a warning.

“Exclusive to other force sensitive people, to other Sith, and to anyone who knows what they’re looking for exactly.

“And what am I looking for … exactly?”

The fourth hand took the key out of the youth’s palm. “Hard to say …” The diner owner grumbled, stroking his whiskered chin thoughtfully with his second arm. “It seems like some sort of navigational chart.” He dangled it in front of his eyes.

“To where, though?” Jacen muttered.

“Hard to tell when the other part is missing.”

Jacen caught the necklace tossed back to him with a waiting hand. But the information caused him to double take. “What other part?” There was a cold smirk that hid a temper storm back building in his chest.

It was the last thing he wanted to hear.

“See those red little jagged edges where the crystal is exposed … someone split this key into two halves. The only way to retrieve the data is to put it back together, and find the navigational hub it goes with.” He shrugged.

Jacen clenched his jaw. “Great … that’s just great.” He sighed heavily. “I can’t believe this!” He punched the table. He turned his wrath on Dex who seemed more amused than anything. “Who would’ve this belonged too?” He asked shortly.

“Probably the Emperor himself.”

“And where is his tomb?”

“If I were taking bets I would say he’s most likely on Korriban, with the rest of the Sith Lords … except for the last three.”

“It’s Moraband … and you mean the last **_two_** Sith Lords? don’t forget, Dex, one of them is still out there.” Jacen grunted bitterly.

He was broodingly quiet as he looked out the window thoughtfully. There was a dangerous spark in his green eyes that the diner owner recognized. It was the same look that Jacen got when he was about to make a maneuver mid-podrace that seemed otherwise rash when he was falling behind. It was the same spark he got when he had set up the meeting for Kajiklub to plan a bank heist, and it was the universal sign for a Solo about to attempt something reckless and all around stupid.

“Oh no …” Dexter shook his head. “No, don’t you even think about it.” He pointed at the star pilot accusingly. “No one who has ever set foot in that god forsaken place has ever come out again.” The Besalisk warned.

Jacen looked cocky as he leaned closer. “Then where do all the stories come from?” He quirked an eyebrow.

“Fine, no one who steps foot in those ruins, ever comes out the same.” He corrected.

“What do you want from me?” The young man replied leaning back again.

“For you not to go to the Sith home world. Or have you forgotten who raised you and what you are. The things on that planet, the darkness … it’ll eat any one alive … most especially a Jedi Knight!”

“Look around you, Dexter, does it look like I have a choice here?” 

“There is always a choice …”

“Not for me!” There was darkness in Jacen’s voice that gathered shadows around him. It made the large alien nervous for a heat stopped beat.

He changed his approach, but didn’t change his mind as he came at the youth again. “Look, kid, let me tell you the score here. You need money to fund an expedition. You need people, diggers, and most importantly, you need machinery. You don’t have money, and even if you did, I can guarantee you that you’re not gonna find a Mining Guild that is going to go a thousand light years near Korriban.” He didn’t pull a punch.

“Then we go to someone else!” Jacen argued.

“To where, kid, the underworld? Sure, they’re probably greedy enough to risk a small army just to raid a couple of Sith tombs. But how well did that work out last time with Kajiklub? Plus who are you gonna go to now that your reputation is right on common with the average Solo, huh, you gonna go to the Hutts? You think Leech has been waiting a long time to get even, Rotta the Hutt alone has been waiting fifty years to avenge his father.” He lectured with a sigh of irritation at the relentlessness of the young man who quietly brooded across from him.

“Look, Jacen, you’re broke, in debt, and captaining a rusting bucket of bolts with a name that every Bounty Hunter in the galaxy would love to notch in their kill list. You got nothing but your mama’s old blaster at your side to protect you when they finally send the **_Mandalorian_** to finish it. The war is over and you’re still in a rush to get yourself killed out there. … It’s time to move on, give up the ghost, and let it go, kid!” Dexter implored with a sympathetic growl.

For a moment a girl’s voice gave Jacen a pause. _“You let me go now …”_ He gave a shake of his head at the feeling of phantom pressure of a young woman sitting in his lap, her slender body curled against him maternally.

“How bout some free advice …?” The Besalisk set three arms down on the table.

“I’m not really interested in your opinion, Dex.” Jacen replied coolly, knowing what was coming. He looked out in defeat toward the waving wheat in the far fields across the dirty road and rail fencing. 

But to the rude reply, the old alien just chuckled with a scratch of his head at the youthful cheek and frustration. Three hundred years of life experience had given him the patience of a prairie boulder. He growled and gave a look around his business to rework his approach.

“Look Maz has been asking around for you, Solo.”

“I’m even less interested in what Maz Kanata has to say.”

To that the Besalisk grumbled in amusement. “I can’t argue with that … but the season is about to start.” He began.

“Podracing?” Jacen did a double take. “You want to talk to me about podracing right now?” he asked in offended rhetorical.

“Maz still has your racer.”

“Yeah, in hawk … For all I know, it was Kanata who sic’d 4-LOM and Bossk on me in the first place when she didn’t get her money back.”

“And what better way to get it back to her than to win a couple of races. Win them the exciting way you used too and pay out of debt with the winnings, you know … just like the old days.” There was a surge of excitement in the big Besalisk’s voice as he lightly punched the young man in the chest in encouragement.

“By the old days you mean when I was lining you and that old pirate’s pockets with credits?” He asked with a roll of his eyes.

“I don’t remember you and _the General_ hurting or wonton back during your racing days, either, Young Blood.” He chuckled. “Kinda think of it, we were all happier back in the old days.” He scratched his chin, a hopeful look crossed his features.

Jacen’s eyes glazed over. For a second, for a moment, he remembered the exhilaration of the roar of the engines, the way his heart pounded as the blip of the countdown echoed over the building thunder of the crowd. But it was the way the whole world went away in a flash, and everything got very still as the last tick of the timer went off and it was time to go. He pushed the control-yokes forward, felt the wind on his face, and there was nothing like it in the world, in the galaxy, in the universe. It was simpler back then, easier knowing that he had a grandmother and grandfather. Sure he had stories of what and who were missing from his life. But he had no memories of a missing mother, of a murdered father, he had only known a retired general and an old Jedi master teaching him ancient secrets that no one but his parent’s had known. He was happier in the old days because he didn’t know what he did now, didn’t know about the evil that existed in the galaxy. Never thinking that all the stories and warnings that came from his grandparents would ever come true. That one day he’d come face to face with a Dark Lord and watch his grandfather be cut down in front of him. Jacen Solo didn’t know, back then, about the thrill and the horror of feeling the rush of going hundreds of miles an hour, but racing not for a prize, but to take another beings life with the squeeze of the trigger on a X-Wing Jock stick. He didn’t know about all the deadly emotions, the anger, and cold focus that came Pavlovian to the crackle of a lightsaber igniting.

The war had changed Jacen Solo, had perverted the old feelings of freedom into something else entirely. The soaring, the pull of the gut, the bending of the force to control his actions that had once been associated with podracing now came with the presence of the distant clamor of death and killing that ever rattled in the Star Pilot’s ears. His exposer to the horror and terror of the suffering that bled two galaxies had shaken everything in the young hero’s world loose. It was the losses that had haunted his whole life that had suddenly became real, given context, and fell right on top of his head.  He saw friends, floating, bloated and frozen, in the vast vacuum of space. They were bleeding on some muddy battlefield, or crushed in the ruins of a razed city.  All of it had driven him to a dark place where he dwelled in the bitter and cold cellars of emotions that tore him apart. His only path to quiet the regret and anger of those long lost was to pursue vengeance against a vile creature of perversion and darkness that crawled out of the shadows of jealous hatred and avarice. Now at the end of the rope, he was consumed with a dangerous malice that drove him to fulfill the promise he had made at the funeral pyre where they burned the empty robes of Luke Skywalker, his grandfather and master. Jacen Solo had lost everything in a war with the dark side that had been fought long before his birth. Now the only thing that comforted him was destroying the enemy once and for all …

By any means necessary.

“I don’t know how to go back to the way things were … not anymore, Dex.” He said quietly. His  eyes were downcast.

Dexter wanted to say something, lecture, comfort, chin-up the young man. But he knew there was no use. It was hard to talk to someone who had changed so much since the last time they had talked. War was a terrible business and some soldier’s personalities change, some amplify, and there were even a few who’s world and existence became that much clearer. For Jacen Solo, his existence was crystal clear. The death of Luke Skywalker at the hands of Darth Plagueis had come so close before the battlefields of the Draconian Wars. It left Jacen swimming and surrounded by death and suffering, forced his skills in the loss of life that he had a hand in. It was a state of mind, a state of living that he could not escape and had become a part of him now. The dashing racer was no more. The daring star pilot, the swashbuckling Jedi Knight with a Lightsaber in his hand had grown tired. He was now whatever a galaxy without war had made of the Warrior it bred. He was whatever fate and destiny had made him.

And that was someone that Dexter Jettster lamented the existence of every day.

With a creak the large Besalisk exited the booth. He opened his mouth again, hoping to encourage the young man with parting words. But their talk had left Jacen in a poorer mood than when he was brought to the diner. But even then, he hated to have left him this way. He placed a hand on the young man’s shoulder as he stood over him.

“I’ll, uh, I’ll check around with my contacts. I’m sure there’s someone as crazy as you, willing to dig up some ancient bad guys.” He winked with a good natured chuckle of encouragement. Jacen nodded but didn’t look up. There a notion of defeat hanging over their parting as he lumbered away back to the kitchen.

Jacen was all alone again, weighing options, what little was left to him. Moraband seemed like a particularly bad idea. The sand blasted, desolate, Sith home world had been in ruin for thousands of years. But it hadn’t stopped others from traveling there. But, then, Dexter was right. Jacen had never heard of anyone who went there, not leaving for the worse.

 The last man who had gone to Moraband that Jacen knew of, was a Dark Jedi named Kylo Ren. He had been the First Orders token dark side mascot and Plagueis’s apprentice. He had been a powerful force user who was feral and unpredictable. Jacen used to give him a lot of thought, especially in his younger days. He was the demon in black robes who carried with him an unpredictable, wild, kyber-bladed lightsaber that had skewered his grandfather Han Solo and killed Jacen’s own father Ben Solo. His grandmother told him that Ben and Kylo Ren had killed one another long ago, during the resurrection of Darth Plagueis. Jacen’s mother had been used as a human sacrifice in the dark side ritual, and his father had tried to save her. All three of them died that wicked night. Ben Solo, his lover, and Kylo Ren. When the smoke had cleared, stepping over their corpses was the newly risen Darth Plagueis, fresh and new from nearly a century hiding from death’s gaze.  

There were many nights that his Grandfather was tormented by the dreams of the things done to his adopted daughter before she died. The next day he’d look at Jacen in a funny way, in a guilty way. Jacen’s face was his mother’s face and there was no separating her fate, from the fears of what would be his. In the five years of hunting Plagueis, Jacen had seen the Holocrons, seen the kind of terrifying rituals the Sith had used on other force sensitive victims throughout their ancient history. The only thing that spared him from waking up in cold sweats screaming a young girl’s name was that Jacen didn’t know what his mother looked like, didn’t have a name for her, and didn’t have any connection. It seemed strange that Jacen knew all there was to know about Ben Solo, his father. But his grandparents kept almost everything about his mother a secret, never to be told to him. She was some, tough, smart, ethereally beautiful creature who Ben Solo loved more than anything in life. Jacen’s mother had been a girl when she gave birth, and died barely a woman, leaving nothing for her child but her weapons that he inherited. She had been the most powerful Jedi of her age and yet she died in such a horrible, submissive, manner. It occurred to Jacen that maybe this was why they never told him, because they couldn’t bear to relive the horrific fate of this _angel_ they had cherished.  

He looked down to the Navigational Key that he had worn around his neck his whole life. But as he pondered what his father was trying to tell him, leave him to find, he felt something coming. It was the same feeling that he had gotten when he was at the cottage, the same vortex of power that had frozen the Draken in place, before his mind was stripped. It was the same presence that was watching over him that he didn’t notice till he found that it was watching over the Princess as well. Something was here in the diner, something dangerous, chaotic, and conflicted with emotion. He lifted his head just in time to be addressed. 

“They said that I could find “The Blue Comet” here.”

The stranger’s voice was measured, formal, and had deep cadence. The memory of a tall figure and a baby boy flashed into Jacen’s head. There were a thousand emotions that the single sentence brought out of him, and he struggled to understand why, almost as he struggled to suppress his feelings.

“The townies have got your leg, pal. He doesn’t exist anymore.” Jacen retorted shortly. The stranger was quiet for an observing moment.

“Maybe not … but that’s what they used to call you.” There was no question in his staunch voice.

“Used to.” He agreed.

“I was told that the hero of the battle of Naraj was now the captain of the Millennium Falcon. And that he was here on Dantooine.”

“They were right on all accounts, but one.” Jacen lounged back, keeping up his tough guy act for the clear Force sensitive standing just behind him. “There were no heroes at Naraj. Anyone who survived that meandering, bloody fist fight can attest to it.” There was something haunted about the way he spoke of the Draken’s high water mark in their last offensive that was stopped cold in the bloodiest single day in recorded history of intergalactic warfare. 

“So …” The stranger drew out the word thoughtfully. “You’re Jacen Solo.” He didn’t ask.

“Used to be.”

There was something in the way the man said his name. There was emotion to it, a history with it. He said it as if he knew it all along, that there was ownership to the word. It brought on a sudden rise of unworthiness to the way it sounded on the man’s lips. There were thousands of emotions that was coming from a life and times he couldn’t remember, but were somehow there, buried deep within. They were memories and feelings that exasperated wounds war wounds and losing battles with powerful Dark Lords.

 “You’re Jacen Solo, son of Ben Solo. You were raised by General Leia Solo on the planet Naboo when your mother was kidnapped and your father never returned home with her. You were the apprentice of Luke Skywalker, before he was killed by Darth Plagueis. You were a prodigal championship racer till you ran away at sixteen and joined the Republic Navy as an X-Wing pilot at the outbreak of the war, against your grandmother’s commands to not get involved. You fought at the Battle of Naboo, and destroyed three Draconian battle cruisers, including the royal flagship. You were named an honorary Jedi Knight, based on your heroism in battle, and your prior training and rearing by the legendary Jedi Master. After the war you fought Darth Plagueis on Muunilinst where **_she_** killed your comrades and took your sword hand. And last night you drunkenly and foolishly fought a Draken twice your size over a slave girl. He would’ve killed you, if I hadn’t showed up. After you passed out, I brought you here.”

Hearing his entire life story, including the details of a blank night, Jacen immediately turned around. There, standing in front of him was the same man from last night. He was tall and cowled in a brown half cloak that was over only one of his shoulders. His clothing was worn and threadbare like that of a hard traveler. In his hand was a staff of black rusting metal that he used for a walking stick. The metal staff seemed familiar to the youth and yet very dear to the man who used it.   

“Who are you?” he asked with a frown

 There was something about Jacen’s frown, the way it looked, It elicited some emotional spark in the hooded man. The frown, the face, it was as if he saw a ghost in Jacen. He responded to all of these emotions by drawing down his hood.

He had long shoulder length black curls that were streaked with white. His scraggly beard was more salt than pepper. He had an unusual face that was somewhere between plain and classically handsome but hard to tell as it was marked by a gruesome facial scar that ran across it.  The old drifter’s clothing was torn and ragged. His hands callused from long years of wandering. But it was his eyes that drew Jacen to him. They were blank and greyed in cataract with three long talon scars marking over each eye as if some vicious beast had tried to claw them out of their sockets. He was blinded by appearance and yet both sightless orbs were staring right at Jacen as if he could see him.

In their connection the young man was suddenly flooded with memories of the cottage, of the YT Freighter. The Draken slaver frozen mid strike, the fear in his eyes as a hooded man ripped the life from his very mind in a black rage. He felt the darkness and the light, the rage and hatred for the one who had threatened someone held dear. He felt the overwhelming swirl of feral power and pain of a life unlived and unrealized in the arms of a young woman who was his soul and the two children their love had made. And through it all there was still a tall man holding a baby boy tightly, crying for past sins that he was afraid would be visited upon the child. 

“Someone who needs your help.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


End file.
